Curt

[Curt]

Hello all. Same username from the other forum.
Atom !! "300", and still loving it.

[Norm]

Welcome Curt!

[Gage]

Curt, It was a real pleasure meeting you at Atomfest. I'm glad you found this forum and welcome!

[Norm]

Curt, you're spam magnetism is amazing!

I really don't see how this accomplishes anything for them either

[bolus]

They are just working google ranking by posting a bunch of links so google will rank their pages higher. Steve should make one of us a mod so we can delete these better

[Norm]

That makes sense. I nominate you Bolus of Portlandia as mod of the Chat ...

[Steve]

WOW! The spammers DO love Curt! But glad to have you here, man!

One of the reasons I force everyone to post in this forum first is that it allows to me find the SPAM quickly. Then I can just hit a single delete button, banning the spammer and removing all their posts at once site-wide.

[Norm]

Thanks, Steve

[DarthChicken]

well that worked well, LOL

[Steve]

Sigh. I've gone to DEFCON 2 with the spammers.

Before today, the only requirements for registration were passing a CAPTCHA and confirming their email. Then, before they could have site-wide posting priviledges, they had to make a post in this "Welcome" forum first. It allowed me to only have to monitor one forum, because even if they posted here and then posted in other forums, I'd still see it here and then delete their account - along with all their posts in one fell swoop.

It seems now, however, that the spambots are getting more complex. They're clearly able to auto-solve basic CAPTCHA, and auto-confirm emails. So I added two more tests to get through before posting privileges are granted. The registration form asks for them to briefly explain why they want to join the forum, and use the word "Atom" in the response, and I now have to manually approve all registrations before posting privileges are granted.

I have a few other things I can try, such as IP banning and DNSBL lookups, but each anti-spambot countermeasure I deploy has the potential to make it more difficult for legit users to register, so I'll turn up the heat slowly.

I appreciate the members here flagging the SPAM posts that have sneaked through. Hopefully today's additions will help increase the signal-to-noise ratio.