Mod Report: Attack of the Moonspeakers!

[kaptain_kavern]

Thx for the quick reply. I will try to pass the message there.

[milon]

Thanks for relaying the messages! 

[NullQuery]

I was actually prevented from posting due to a broken verification image earlier. I mentioned a potential solution: write your own verification system. Any self-developed system (even if it's a simple button that sends an ajax post) should do the trick. If you do it that way you won't need to have your users answer silly verification questions or have to deal with a lot of hassle.

[Shinzy]

I was actually prevented from posting due to a broken verification image earlier. I mentioned a potential solution: write your own verification system. Any self-developed system (even if it's a simple button that sends an ajax post) should do the trick. If you do it that way you won't need to have your users answer silly verification questions or have to deal with a lot of hassle.

I saw you communicate via the report post thing, it was really fascinating ride to follow

[NullQuery]

I saw you communicate via the report post thing, it was really fascinating ride to follow

Was anything ever done about that offensive post though?

[Shinzy]

I saw you communicate via the report post thing, it was really fascinating ride to follow

Was anything ever done about that offensive post though?

It was real Raymon Redding situation there. That post now has diplomatic immunity as it's services as conduit for communication was required

[billycop32]

It was real Raymon Redding situation there. That post now has diplomatic immunity as it's services as conduit for communication was required

congratulations, you actually used a phrase that made me use google. good job.

moving on, I noticed the term "global moderators". does that mean you have normal moderators to supplement/support the globals? interesting chain of command here....

[PotatoeTater]

Another one tonight, it seems that every night about the same time we have this issue.

[Shinzy]

It was real Raymon Redding situation there. That post now has diplomatic immunity as it's services as conduit for communication was required

congratulations, you actually used a phrase that made me use google. good job.

moving on, I noticed the term "global moderators". does that mean you have normal moderators to supplement/support the globals? interesting chain of command here....

Oh I hope it was to find out about Raymond and not to decode my grammar
(Thank you?)
Anyway global moderators are at the collar end of the command chain
it's just global as in we've got the access/moderationrights everywhere in the board
There aren't any other kind of moderators.. except for Skully.. he's bit different.

I tried to have Fluffy deputised as my minion but Ty wouldn't do it

[billycop32]

slap another spam down. you gotta admire their resilience though.

and yes it was raymon redding.

[chaotix14]

Seems the spambots are a bit later than usual today. Hopefully someone's still/already awake to slap them down.

[Coenmcj]

I only ever see 'em when none of you guys are online, report 'em every time I see them. Either they watch the boards to see when all the mods are off, or you guys are just that quick to slaughter them where they stand.

Either way, Cheers!

[billycop32]

I only ever see 'em when none of you guys are online, report 'em every time I see them. Either they watch the boards to see when all the mods are off, or you guys are just that quick to slaughter them where they stand.

Either way, Cheers!

(speaking from experience as a mod on other forums.)
more like quick to slaughter them where they stand. just because someone appears to be offline doesn't mean they aren't watching from other methods like a open email. Not to mention a lot of forums allow you to "hide" or appear to be offline even though you are still on the forum. Like a hunter stalking the prey....

[ColonistNo947]

Spammers tech keeps evolving. So must the anti spam tech.

Yes this is the case, there is forum spamming software out there called Xrummer it's kinda of widely known about secret in the blackhat marketing world.  You just plug in some keywords and it goes out and finds all the forums on the net that are related to that keyword and then proceeds to create accounts automatically and start posting your spam in every thread/topic/section it gains access to.  (Not to mention other 0-day exploits on any and all forum softwares.

Worst case scenario: a forum migration might be in order, to a better forum software.

It doesn't matter what forum software you're on the software targets all the most popular and also free forums available.

I've been in marketing for 9 years and know a great deal about different techniques and tools available for such things.  (Note: inbe4-screams of Spammer comes my way, just cause I know about them doesn't mean I employ these techniques personally.  Best way to stay competitive in any business is to know your competition.)

Captchas also are not really effective either, There is proof of concept advanced OCR that was shown a few years back that successfully defeated RE-Captcha (owned by google) and various other captcha solutions automatically.  Thankfully it was never released publicly and only shown off as a demostration, otherwise the spam problem would be even greater then it currently is.  Also there are blackhat services available with API's that allow you to copy the captcha image and send to a live data entry agent (Usually Indian or Filipeno) that will type the captcha out and send it back to your software to defeat the captcha.  Semi-Automated and only limited by the amount of cash you throw at these services.  Implementing Captcha will slow things down, but will never truly get away from the problem at hand, and as a bonus you also cost the spammers a bit of cash with each captcha they solve.

The newer captcha systems that make you click on and choose specific images or the ones that have like a mini-game (puzzle to complete) are the best ones available at this point since there requires mouse interaction and "problem solving (ie. a puzzle) with the captcha instead.  And the captcha solving services aren't able to accept these types to solve by hand.

Just some food for thought on the whole issue from someone that's been in the industry for quite a long time.  Typically I just ignore threads like these, however I really love RimWorld and the work being done over at Ludeon Studios so thought I'd offer up a bit of my experience in the matter as a thank you.

[Calahan]

@ All

Bumping this to kindly request and remind all RimWorlders to please report any spambot posts you see asap, and please don't assume someone else has already reported them, or that we (the moderators) will see the spambot posts ourselves. We likely will see them (at some point) but unfortunately perhaps not until after they've made a considerable mess. Which was the case earlier today, since anybody visiting the mods forum couldn't possibly have missed the 1,000+ spambot posts that were generated by a pair of bots inside of 4 hours.

So if you see a spambot post (they ae very obvious) then please report it so that we can ban the bot and clean up the mess as soon as possible, and before it gets to ridiculous levels of 1,000+ posts.

Thanks.