Spam attack this morning

mikesus - guested · Post by **mikesus - guested** » Fri Sep 01, 2006 9:42 pm

It is a multi-layered approach...

1st

Tight control of foreign ips. Sorry but the ip's that are guilty of spam are predominately from a few countries. This is BEST controlled by the .htaccess file. Block the biggest offenders before they even get to the door.

2nd

Block ANY guest post that tries to post a hyperlink. The ONLY guests that seem to do this are the spammers.

3rd

Use PHPBB to block specific in country ips. The reason for this is to only block the one or two offenders, not the entire class or range.

4th

STOP ALLOWING SPAM REGISTRATIONS! This can be accomplished a number of ways. Capcha (visual verification), renaming any of the variables that are exposed during the registration process (i.e. "IAGREE" is used for the screen used to verify age, this can be changed to something oddball so scripting will break for the spammers, and this is TOTALLY transparent to the end user.)

This approach still allows guests to post, but raises the bar quite a bit for spammers.

or

You could just ignore it and hope it goes away...

Darth Vader Look · Post by **Darth Vader Look** » Fri Sep 01, 2006 10:43 pm

Mikesus wrote:You could just ignore it and hope it goes away...

Yeah, like that has worked . It use to be that I didn't get a shot at killing spam but now I'm whacking them big time. I guess the thrill has worn off on some.

Guest · Post by **Guest** » Sat Sep 02, 2006 11:39 am

SPAM??? we still talking about that?

:::YAWN:::

Mikesus - Guested again · Post by **Mikesus - Guested again** » Sat Sep 02, 2006 2:24 pm

Actually there is another step...

You HAVE to get rid of the spam accounts, or at the very least change their password so they don't log on... The Spam accounts are pretty easy to spot. They are usually the ones with all the fields filled in

sleepyone · Post by **sleepyone** » Mon Sep 04, 2006 12:14 pm

I thank snore dog and the others who are working to get rid of the spam. For notTooTechSavvy folks like me, I am glad there are those who care about keeping this forum dependable and useful. It is one of the few places to get true support and information. The docs and DMEs are not much help! (and I am a health care provider...)

neversleeps · Post by **neversleeps** » Mon Sep 04, 2006 12:33 pm

In case you missed it, the following was posted by Johnny Goodman on Friday, Sept. 1, 2006 at 2:46 pm
Post subject: The Next Step In CPAPtalk.com Spam Control

johnnygoodman wrote: Greetings CPAPtalkers,

We've been getting hit hard the last few days. Some have said that it is to the point where it is taking away from the forum and I'm inclined to agree. As I went through all the reported spam and deleted it, I saw that the same few IPs were big offenders.

It has been suggested before that we bad IPs of repeat offenders. On Wednesday, we're going to be upgrading our spam guard to allow us to choose a "restrict this IP from visiting CPAPtalk.com".

I think this will improve the situation, if not, we're going to have to consider "type the characters in the image" style spam prevention.

Johnny

Johnny has indicated he will be implementing new anti-spam tactics on Wednesday, Sept. 6, 2006.

Spam attack this morning

there is a solution... and it works well