Since moderation would put a strain on Paizo employees, perhaps a first 3 posts captcha.I'm noticing a few recognizable characters, but for the most part these spammers post in korean, correct? Wouldn't it help to just block non alpha-numeric characters besides a few?Problem is that this would hurt PbPs that actually need weird characters for posts in other languages.
I'll go back to my recommendation of requiring that the first 3 posts of any new account be moderated. It would be only a small inconvenience for new users, but it would really cramp the spammers hard since they only post 2 times on each account, and I think that they would have a hard time coming up with 3 legitimate posts to get past this requirement anyway.
Well, the question of moderation strain is: Which is more strain, moderating the first 3 posts of legitimate new users (note: this does not mean new Avatars of existing users), or cleaning up the enormous flood of spam?
As for Captcha, that is a good idea, but it won't solve the problem of human spammers doing what they are doing (and the conclusion in at least 1 of the last 2 threads about the spam threaat was that the spam is being done by humans, not bots).
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To battle!
Weird update note: sometimes when I click on the spammer's name (to flag all of their posts), I get a blank white page (it's a Paizo People page) with a message that says,
here's my redirect
... followed by a looooooooooot of loading and, eventually, a new page that says,
You have made too many requests for the same page too quickly.
Please wait a minute before trying again.
Just so you guys are aware. Don't know if that helps.
EDIT: for clarity.
Weird update note: sometimes when I click on the spammer's name (to flag all of their posts), I get a blank white page (it's a Paizo People page) with a message that says,
here's my redirect... followed by a looooooooooot of loading and, eventually, a new page that says,
You have made too many requests for the same page too quickly.
Please wait a minute before trying again.
Just so you guys are aware. Don't know if that helps.
EDIT: for clarity.
You know, I'm wondering if this is somehow due/involved with part of the way they are getting around the laser.
Could they be DDOSing (or something similarly spammy) the laser itself, somehow, to open up a method for making account aliases so fast the forums aren't processing them right? Bear in mind, I'm pretty much guessing about arcane and eldritch things about which I know precious little (as is probably obvious).
Also, I suspect they're using actual internet names, i.e. real handles of real people from other forums, at least for some of the name choices... or at least they're faking it. But I suspect (since they're in a hurry) they're probably working off of borrowed lists.
Skim/copy/collect a huge slew of actual internet handles, use those to create new aliases, spam, and leave.
Again, though, I could be wrong. These are just guesses.
EDIT: Oh, yeah, and sometimes it forces me to sign into Paizo again.
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Help, spammers coming fast and furious! I'm hitting the spam-highlighting ballista as fast as I can, but the hordes are overwhelming the ramparts. Can't hold on for much longer...
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Deleted my post. No point giving them ideas, I guess (although I'm sure they've thought of that...)
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It's like a Gibbering Swarm that keeps resurrecting.
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Whatever was done to fix the anti-spam system is NOT working. When I went to the home page just a few minutes ago, 8 (nearly all) of the Messageboards threads it listed were spam threads.
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Holy spaceballs Batman, blow em from the sky!!
Dutifully flakking them, aye sir!!
The fewer iterations of the name there are, the better.
Short version: it's a gambling site.
EDIT: The more times the name shows up on the site, the better. It's not about people here clicking it. It's about it's presence. It gives them legitimacy. Please edit your post, if possible, to remove the actual site name. Thanks! :D
Is... is it over?
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Is... is it over?
That wave. But stay vigilant...
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The spam laser doesn't block content just because it uses foreign characters, the heuristic is much more complex than that.I'm noticing a few recognizable characters, but for the most part these spammers post in korean, correct? Wouldn't it help to just block non alpha-numeric characters besides a few?Problem is that this would hurt PbPs that actually need weird characters for posts in other languages.
I'll go back to my recommendation of requiring that the first 3 posts of any new account be moderated. It would be only a small inconvenience for new users, but it would really cramp the spammers hard since they only post 2 times on each account, and I think that they would have a hard time coming up with 3 legitimate posts to get past this requirement anyway.
Even if it wasn't, losing the special characters for PbPs would be a small price if it cut a lot of this garbage off the site.
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Arghh! can't edit my previous post.
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They keep on coming!
Since they keep on making accounts that fast, the person who created those posts probably coded a small script that allows them to create accounts and post spam.
Is there any chance we can create our own script (with permission, of course) and flag every single post?
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Clicking on what looks like the "main account", it appears the person behind the spam has some coding knowledge. The appear to have created a script that allows them to keep on redirecting to the same page.
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What would be extremely helpful would be a way to mark a thread as spam without having to open the thread, similar to the hide thread button to hide a thread without entering it. That way we can flag with one click without having to go into each thread to flag it.
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What would be extremely helpful would be a way to mark a thread as spam without having to open the thread, similar to the hide thread button to hide a thread without entering it. That way we can flag with one click without having to go into each thread to flag it.
I second this.
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What would be extremely helpful would be a way to mark a thread as spam without having to open the thread, similar to the hide thread button to hide a thread without entering it. That way we can flag with one click without having to go into each thread to flag it.
That would make everything easier
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We are really going to have to fire those goblins......
Arghh! can't edit my previous post.
It's okay. It happens.
I didn't know until they told me the last time this same thing happened, too.
It's a thing - you can't know unless people tell you.
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The spam is still coming! I'm out of ammo!
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Tactislion, you are probably right about the ddos thing. During a ddos attack, people send so much information, a website goes down. Hope this does not happen to the paizo forums
It blows my mind that after these attacks have happened for such a long time that Paizo hasn't come up with a way to stop them.
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It blows my mind that after these attacks have happened for such a long time that Paizo hasn't come up with a way to stop them.
It's not automated; they are actually paying people to go and post this stuff manually on message boards. Any function they put in to stop this has to be overcome by a person or the threads die. So there is no simple solution to this, unfortunately.
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It blows my mind that after these attacks have happened for such a long time that Paizo hasn't come up with a way to stop them.
They had huge success a while bank - there's been a general lack of spam for a while.
Now the spammers have presumably worked out what paizo did and have started to do something different in response. Because the spammers are actual people with a lot of time and not programmed bots, it's probably much harder to target them permanently.
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They'll just make a few posts along the lines of "Where can I buy this game?", "What's the strongest class?", "Which books should a newbie buy first?" get approved and then start making spam posts a week later with their approved account.
Meanwhile we get more spam - a whole bunch of genuine-sounding questions where the asker doesn't really care about the answer and the moderators have to address not only their concerns but also the legitimate new users (who are now deterred to some degree from coming here to ask questions).
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They have found a way past the laser algorithm, I'll have the full team in the office in the morning and will adjust accordingly. Bear with for a bit, the downside of human opponents is they have this annoying ability to learn and adapt.
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Guys, please don't post translations of the spam in here. I completely understand the curiosity, but honestly all you do is give them another copy of their message on the forum.
They are running a botnet, which is why we can't just block their IPs (they are many and rotate as we block). We'll adjust the laser to include their latest variations and all will be normal again. :)
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We are really going to have to fire those goblins......
Their union reps are....very large....
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They keep on coming!
Since they keep on making accounts that fast, the person who created those posts probably coded a small script that allows them to create accounts and post spam.
Is there any chance we can create our own script (with permission, of course) and flag every single post?
That's more or less what the spam laser does :) The downside is they are constantly working to bypass our protections. They fail far more often than not, but everyone gets lucky sometimes.
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We have no affiliation with this crap.
The Borg win the right away.
With assimilation. Resistance is futile.
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Not that I would know.
They'll just make a few posts along the lines of "Where can I buy this game?", "What's the strongest class?", "Which books should a newbie buy first?" get approved and then start making spam posts a week later with their approved account.
Meanwhile we get more spam - a whole bunch of genuine-sounding questions where the asker doesn't really care about the answer and the moderators have to address not only their concerns but also the legitimate new users (who are now deterred to some degree from coming here to ask questions).
Posts (especially initial ones) with questions like that should be redirected to an already-posted FAQ rather than blanked-approved. That means that the spammers would actually have to get creative in a way that they are unlikely to be well set up to do.