SPAMMAGE

[tin]

Sorry for the spammage and the slow response to it. I think the board index is catching up with my mass deletions

[PajamaDarkness]

and my GOODNESS is it huge!

I mentioned this already in the discord, though i haven't mentioned it on the forum yet:

Around February 2, 2020, I noticed about 10+ pages of spam, mostly relating to captcha (what's up with the forum getting so much posts about that?). 5 days later, I checked in and the forums gained about 51+ more spam posts, and now it's getting spread into the other boards.(from the looks of it)

I've stayed completely inactive here just in case I'd get messaged with spam, as mentioned in an old thread:

I see the board got properly spammed over the last week or so, including it seems some lovely PMs.

If the spam could be cleaned up (along with finding better ways to combat such), that would be nice.

[tin]

What seems to happen is the world of spammers at large have a few humans gaming the spambot measures, and as soon as they do, the answer(s?) are stored somewhere and the automated botnet stuff starts. That's why we're left alone for months, then suddenly there's an inrush of new accounts. PITA and a hex on all the people writing software that does this and working in the boilerhouses!

Further there was a problem with phpBB rebuilding indexes due to some peculiarity between PHP, MySQL and Russian characters (would be Russian wouldn't it?) but I figured a way around it

So hopefully normal (quiet) service resumed for a while at least!

[AriX]

Thanks so much for tackling that, tin! Let me know if you want me to try to switch up the verification mechanisms...

[tin]

No sweat. I update them when I find out we've been spammed - the questions are a bit rubbish but I can't think of anything more creative that a bot couldn't work out quick - but they clearly have humans answering them, and then they're stuck in a database or something and many dodgy registrations follow. I guess I'll just keep an eye out for the next one!

[tin]

Thanks folks to everyone that reported the latest spam. Gone now although it looks like the messages remain in your PMs. Sorry about that!

[PajamaDarkness]

I haven't been active on the forums so I haven't gotten any yet