Mod Report: Attack of the Moonspeakers!

[Ramsis]

Shalom friends! Moderator Ramsi here o/

So, as I'm sure the early to late forum users have noticed we've been under attack by bots posting things along the lines of "耶稣基督帮我你个狗娘养的SHOPBESTVIAGRAMAGAZINE.NOPE" and then a long line of that being spammed for about 100 times in a topic, then that topic gets cloned as many times as the user can before they get banned. It goes without saying but these are bots and they deserve death. Before anyone throws a huff or a puff by the way the term Moonspeak has been culturally accepted by most Asian territories so relax... <3

Sometimes the bots spam in Chinese, we had three bots spamming in Japanese, and a large number of them seem to post in Korean dialects. We really can't do too much to counter it just short of closing down registration and personally that's not something I'm comfortable with as the influx of new users daily is a marvelous thing and I don't feel one apple spoils the bunch. Now there are some options we can follow but most of them take time and resources that just aren't worth expending but I assure you all there is a fix for the problem coming down the pipe, it'll just take a bit so sit tight folks! Oh, and before anyone just screams "CAPTCHA THE HELL OUT OF IT!" Yeah we're almost 5000% sure that the bots are having accounts made for them then told to run rampant so captcha only goes so far these days.

"So, what is actually being done about the spammers?"
WELL I'M GLAD YOU ASKED. We have, to date, 9 global moderators who have total access to every inch of the boards for cleaning up messes. Believe it or not we get maybe 1-2 reports every few days anymore because for the most part you lot police yourselves, which is amazing by the way DON'T TAKE THAT AS A CHALLENGE, but as I'm sure some of you can assume that means problems are generally first come ~ first serve for the mods so when these spammers come out of the wood works at a normal time it's not uncommon to see 3-5 moderators light up on the active lists. We hit like piranhas most of the time trying to dismantle and solve problems, it's why we're here. With a spammer we try our best to go into overdrive as they tend to crank out topics ASAP. Mass deletions, tracking, banning of bots, etc.

"So what can I do to help?"
REPORT. HOLY CRAP IF YOU SEE A SPAMMER REPORT ASAP! Don't think "oh well I'm sure everyone else is reporting them too so I won't bother." No, to hell with that friendo! Report them as soon as you see them! I'd rather clean up 20 duplication reports but hit the spammer almost as soon as they start than have seven users at three in the morning not report a spammer; suddenly we wake up to 500 topics because of people questioning if they should report.

MODERATION WILL NEVER BE ANGRY AT A REPORT. EVEN THE SILLIEST REPORT!

Did you see what I did there? It's obnoxious and orange and it makes me want to harvest all of my prisoner's organs out of pure rage. Seriously though, we're here for you guys and to keep Tynan from having to do anything other than responding to posts and working on his sassy little game. If we have a problem with serial reportists we will talk to that person but other than a moderator telling you to stop please report to your heart's content.

Tl;dr: Mods killing spammers, report harder nerds!

Alright well go on with your day folks, I'm going to GO for a bit.


The thread will be unstickied after a week or two, just making sure the word gets out

[zandadoum]

Capcha on login and / or registration should prevent this?

[Shinzy]

Capcha on login and / or registration should prevent this?

Tynan tried to find out a proper good one to prevent bots quite a while ago when there was huge bot troubles like.. maybe a year ago? (He even asked around in twitter for some strong stuff for weeding out bots, as far as I recall!)
and it did work really well so far

[zandadoum]

Capcha on login and / or registration should prevent this?

Tynan tried to find out a proper good one to prevent bots quite a while ago when there was huge bot troubles like.. maybe a year ago? (He even asked around in twitter for some strong stuff for weeding out bots, as far as I recall!)
and it did work really well so far

Spammers tech keeps evolving. So must the anti spam tech.
You can't just install something static and expect it to work forever.

I don't know compatible apps/mods for this specific forum software, but the must be some piece of capcha compatible and up to date with current spams.

Some paid ones have database updates like antivirus to keep on pair with spammers, so might be worth looking into that.

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

[b0rsuk]

Can't you just block messages with asian ideograms ? You could leave one subforum where they are allowed, so when someone from Asia comes he can post there and be whitelisted.

[zandadoum]

Can't you just block messages with asian ideograms ? You could leave one subforum where they are allowed, so when someone from Asia comes he can post there and be whitelisted.

How would this help when spammers (even Asian ones) start using occidental characters instead?

[zandadoum]

PS:
@OP

try if FAIL2BAN works. I have it on all my mail & webservers but I don't know if it works specifically for this forum software other than running on the whole server instead just forum.

EDIT: found this pretty informative post:
http://www.simplemachines.org/community/index.php?topic=452752.0

[RemingtonRyder]

I don't know if maybe it would be a lot of moderation work, but if it's possible for posts to go to the moderation queue until someone has had five to ten posts approved, that would defeat the purpose of bot spamming.

They use this sort of system over on the KSP forums.

[chaotix14]

Perhaps just use a post counter, for example if some user makes a high amount of posts in a short amount of time, they get flagged automatically as requiring moderator attention and don't get posted until the moderator verifies its not a spam bot. The same could be applied to multiple threads over a short period of time. Maybe even add something on that checks for high similarities between posts and lowers the post counter significantly based on that.

[Nictis]

Perhaps just use a post counter, for example if some user makes a high amount of posts in a short amount of time, they get flagged automatically as requiring moderator attention and don't get posted until the moderator verifies its not a spam bot. The same could be applied to multiple threads over a short period of time. Maybe even add something on that checks for high similarities between posts and lowers the post counter significantly based on that.

Or some way to flag them and let them keep posting, but give the mods an option to automatically take down all of their posts from the user page?

[Jaxxa]

I am assuming that if there is a spam of many many of the same threads that it will be sufficient to just report one of them.

[milon]

Yes, that's correct. Once we identify a spam account, we both ban it and delete all its posts.

And as most everyone knows, I'm pretty active here on a regular basis. It's a testament to our moderator teamwork that the last two major incursions were dealt with before I had a chance to lift a finger. Keep reporting spam so I can get in on the section!

[Shinzy]

last two major incursions were dealt with before I had a chance to lift a finger.

Lazy bugger

[kaptain_kavern]

Lately I see on Reddit people complaining about being banned from the forum. Can it be related? (When you ban is it by IP range ?)

https://www.reddit.com/r/RimWorld/comments/4xxcaf/banned_from_ludeon_forums/
https://www.reddit.com/r/RimWorld/comments/4x05cm/banned_from_forum/
https://www.reddit.com/r/RimWorld/comments/4xcyv9/im_banned_for_no_reason_please_help/

Was just trying to help. Keep up the good job guys o7

[milon]

For a short while we were using IP bans, but that did end up blocking legit users.

Regarding the links - thanks for digging those up.  I don't have a reddit account, nor do I plan to make one.  If anyone does have a reddit account, feel free to relate what I'm saying here:

https://www.reddit.com/r/RimWorld/comments/4xxcaf/banned_from_ludeon_forums/
That's not a banned user.  It's a server error of some type.  That user should try again.

https://www.reddit.com/r/RimWorld/comments/4x05cm/banned_from_forum/
This person should email Ludeon Support ([email protected]) or have a friend PM me.  We'll look into it.

https://www.reddit.com/r/RimWorld/comments/4xcyv9/im_banned_for_no_reason_please_help/
This user was correctly informed to contact Ludeon Support.  Hopefully they did.