[Split] Using Advanced Block Mod to Prevent Spam

ckwalsh · Post by **ckwalsh** » Thu Mar 31, 2011 2:42 am

Martin Truckenbrodt wrote:No, sorry, I don't want to spend my sparetime for this. I'm nearly 40 years old. I have a family and I have two much more important hobbies, too. I have a hard job. And at the moment I'm spending too much time at the phpbb.com forums.

No, sorry, I don't want to spend my sparetime for this implementing your request. I'm nearly 40 21 years old. I have a family schoolwork and I have two much more important several other hobbies, too. I have a hard job hard research, hard group projects, and other FOSS obligations. And at the moment I'm spending too much time at the phpbb.com forums.

I find your refusal to put in an ounce towards learning our development methodology and insistence that we do all the implementation for you completely disrespectful of myself, the entire development team, and of the phpBB project. Personally, I don't have the time nor will to devote energy to anyone so disrespectful.

Cullen out.

callumacrae · Post by **callumacrae** » Thu Mar 31, 2011 5:42 am

Me again, cept im being constructive this time

If you want someone to test it on a larger board, I'm prepared to do that. I usually have a bot or two hammering away at ucp.php and posting.php, so they definately attempt to spam me xD

In the last month alone, I got 20,000 hits on posting.php and 38,000 on ucp.php, with 30 posts and 7 registrations.

I will test it without a captcha, because I believe that it'll be more of a test for the modification (and your second post in this thread told me to). I will also modify it a bit so that everything it catches is put into a table.

I'll test it for a week, if I don't see any false positives or errors I will write a patch for you. Because I have far too much time

I'm not trolling this time, I'm genuinely interested as to how effective it is. And if it's 100% effecient you can laugh at me xD

~Callum

KeyCAPTCHA · Post by **KeyCAPTCHA** » Thu Mar 31, 2011 2:56 pm

Martin Truckenbrodt wrote:Okay, it seems that you are living in Russia. A lot of spam comes from Russia. And a lot of ISPs are earning their money with these spammers. So maybe a lot of ISPs are not interested in fighting against spammers

As a specialist working in this field I know a lot of blacklisted Russian, Swiss and German ISPs but I do not know any of them earning money with those spammers.
It i senseless for ISPs to bite their own feeding hands

I'd appreciate if you stop using this forum as platform of unfounded, senseless and harmful proclamations and cliches promptions

callumacrae · Post by **callumacrae** » Thu Mar 31, 2011 5:27 pm

Now using it live at http://phpbb-mobile.com/, without CAPTCHA and without email confirmation in order to put more pressure on the modification.

Started with 60 users and 220 posts, it will be interesting to see what happens

~Callum

callumacrae · Post by **callumacrae** » Fri Apr 01, 2011 4:22 pm

It's blocked 108 bots so far, and let one through, so I guess it's been mostly successful so far

~Callum

Pony99CA · Post by **Pony99CA** » Sat Apr 02, 2011 1:30 am

Callum95 wrote:It's blocked 108 bots so far, and let one through, so I guess it's been mostly successful so far

I would only call it a success if Q&A CAPTCHA blocked fewer than 108. (Of course, I'm not taking human spammers into account there. Q&A will probably block very few human spammers, while blacklists will block more.)

By the way, how do you know the blocked attempts were bots and not real users?

Steve

callumacrae · Post by **callumacrae** » Sat Apr 02, 2011 5:26 am

Pony99CA wrote:
Callum95 wrote:It's blocked 108 bots so far, and let one through, so I guess it's been mostly successful so far
I would only call it a success if Q&A CAPTCHA blocked fewer than 108. (Of course, I'm not taking human spammers into account there. Q&A will probably block very few human spammers, while blacklists will block more.)

By the way, how do you know the blocked attempts were bots and not real users?

Steve

It's letting more through than the captcha - with the captcha I only got one or two registrations a week while with this I'm getting two or three a day.

I don't

~Callum

KeyCAPTCHA · Post by **KeyCAPTCHA** » Sat Apr 02, 2011 5:47 am

Pony99CA wrote:
Callum95 wrote:I (Of course, I'm not taking human spammers into account there. Q&A will probably block very few human spammers, while blacklists will block more.)

What do you mean under "human spammers?
You think bots acting on their own without humans?
If you speak about humans not using bots then their productivity is negligible and cost is not economically viable for anybody to pay anything.
It is possible to speak only about crazy people spamming from the love to this art. But their part is even less than negligible compared with bot-assisted spamming.
Stop bots and you'll see that your "human spammers" concept has gone to nowhere and to absolute zero

BTW, interacting with bots, retroactively analyzing their feeds, is the main reason of lengthy downtimes of all big network service providers, like WordPress relying on blacklisting Akismet, or conceptually similar systems

Dogs and things · Post by **Dogs and things** » Sat Apr 02, 2011 6:47 am

I am convinced that there are humans earning money creating spam accounts on phpbb boards.

They live in low-cost countries so they don´t expect to get paid a lot. And I don´t think they are hobbyists.

KeyCAPTCHA · Post by **KeyCAPTCHA** » Sat Apr 02, 2011 6:57 am

Dogs and things wrote:I am convinced that there are humans earning money creating spam accounts on phpbb boards.

They live in low-cost countries so they don´t expect to get paid a lot. And I don´t think they are hobbyists.

How do you think legit biz find and pay them? and how much?
You simply do not know mechanics of spam business and how it operates

Dogs and things · Post by **Dogs and things** » Sat Apr 02, 2011 7:11 am

Legit biz?

People that pay others to spam their product/service/website should't be considered legit.

An example of how to recruit http://www.phpbb.com/community/viewtopi ... &t=2125936

It's quite likely the spammer is working for an intermediate, the latter being contracted by the "legit biz".

callumacrae · Post by **callumacrae** » Sat Apr 02, 2011 7:32 am

Yeah, there are definately human spammers out there - if not to do the spamming, to answer the captchas.

~Callum

KeyCAPTCHA · Post by **KeyCAPTCHA** » Sat Apr 02, 2011 7:40 am

Dogs and things wrote:Legit biz?
People that pay others to spam their product/service/website should't be considered legit.

If you think a little bit, then any SEO biz is spamming because its purpose is to promote something nobody really wants, asks or needs.
See Content is NOT King; Relationships are King
Spam wouldn't have existed without serious financial support,
and financial flows have their rules of game

Dogs and things wrote:An example of how to recruit http://www.phpbb.com/community/viewtopi ... &t=2125936

You believe everything you find on internet? to any joke and to any jerk?
And this is your source of information and the base of decisions?

Really what is written there is requirements of technical copywriter.
It is quite another cost and simply cannot be that massive (trillions of spam posts per day)

Callum95 wrote:Yeah, there are definately human spammers out there - if not to do the spamming, to answer the captchas

This business of answering captchas do not directly interact with crackable sites.
So, it is only the matter of preventing laundry attack (redirection of captchas to 3d parties)
Other human solutions are not that cheap, massive and connectible to bot APIs.

Dogs and things · Post by **Dogs and things** » Sat Apr 02, 2011 7:44 am

I discovered them because I have a spanish language board and use a picture/Q&A CAPTCHA.
The answer came in select dropdowns, one of ten possible answers was correct. Limit for retry on error was set to 3.

For years this combo kept spam registrations to zero.

Some months ago I noticed how spam registration started to get through.
For a low-cost human spammer it is not very hard to google for answers, if the question is known and simple, more so if the answer is shown in a dropdown list. In my case they had to use google translater, and apparently there are people out there doing this as a job.

I then changed the dropdown select list to a text input field. Users now have to fill in the answer.
This had a devastating effect on the human spam registrations. They fell back to zero.

I feel that having a non-english board definitely gives me an advantage when it comes top fighting spam.

callumacrae · Post by **callumacrae** » Sat Apr 02, 2011 7:47 am

Dogs and things wrote:I discovered them because I have a spanish language board and use a picture/Q&A CAPTCHA.
The answer came in select dropdowns, one of ten possible answers was correct. Limit for retry on error was set to 3.

For years this combo kept spam registrations to zero.

Some months ago I noticed how spam registration started to get through.
For a low-cost human spammer it is not very hard to google for answers, if the question is known and simple, more so if the answer is shown in a dropdown list. In my case they had to use google translater, and apparently there are people out there doing this as a job.

I then changed the dropdown select list to a text input field. Users now have to fill in the answer.
This had a devastating effect on the human spam registrations. They fell back to zero.

I feel that having a non-english board definitely gives me an advantage when it comes top fighting spam.

That doesn't sound specifically like a human spammer to me - bots can use google, too

they've improved a lot recently.

~Callum

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