Epic spam again

[andrewK]

Whew, ok.

I just setup some filters, don't want to give away secrets in case those-who-should-be-killed are listening but it should at least slow them down.

You have to be patient with us, I was informed of this fury only about 2 days ago and we are researching different ideas and seeing how they work. We can't just put up a magic anti-spam wall, we have to try different things and evolve with them just as the spammers are evolving.

So, if there is a week of increased spam, give us a week to combat it and come up with new and better ways of keeping it out. Just please, patience, we are working on it but it takes time to test the solutions and you can only really test 1 possible solution at a time.

So, everyone, relax and lets see what happens tonight (Estonia night, USA day). Cross your fingers.

[C8H10N4O2]

Whew, ok.

I just setup some filters, don't want to give away secrets in case those-who-should-be-killed are listening but it should at least slow them down.

You have to be patient with us, I was informed of this fury only about 2 days ago and we are researching different ideas and seeing how they work. We can't just put up a magic anti-spam wall, we have to try different things and evolve with them just as the spammers are evolving.

So, if there is a week of increased spam, give us a week to combat it and come up with new and better ways of keeping it out. Just please, patience, we are working on it but it takes time to test the solutions and you can only really test 1 possible solution at a time.

So, everyone, relax and lets see what happens tonight (Estonia night, USA day). Cross your fingers.

Unfortunately I think we've already gotten your answer. Thanks for working on this, I realize it takes a while to develop these things. It just seemed as though all of the RB staff didn't really think it was that big of a problem. So I'm glad solutions are being implemented now.

[liladypokerpro]

This is rewarding news. I look forward to seeing the implementations that result. *crosses fingers*

/

[DeadBabySoup]

i'd give the most active members limited mod abilities. let a few of us delete it. but review what was deleted to be sure no one is abusing it.

also, you could require new members to enter captchas for their first 20 posts. that would stop the bots at least.

[andrewK]

also, you could require new members to enter captchas for their first 20 posts. that would stop the bots at least.

This is a good idea for the bots but I need to find a mod for vbulletin that does that (haven't found it yet) or write my own which, well, I have never done before but for sure can't be too difficult.

As for the yesterday changes, we still had a spammer make it through and post like 9 threads about whatever. Its difficult to see if these ones are real people or if they are bots. If they are real people, only real people can combat them, scripts will never stop them so we are looking into adding some more moderators to create our Mutant Moderator Monstrosity (patent pending)

I will post when more updates are coming through the pipeline so you guys can scrutinize to see if things are getting better or not. Again, thanks for being patient.

[andrewK]

Alright, more of an update than a real post but anyway,

I added the captcha for posting a new thread or replying. Now everyone will see this all the time but if you have 10 or more posts then you can just ignore this field, it won't give you an error if you don't fill it out or even if you fill it our incorrectly. if you have less than 10 posts, then it is required and will give you an error if you leave it blank or if you type it in incorrectly.

Hopefully this will also help to get rid of some of this spam. 6 beers for me for my quick but excellent vBulletin hack!

Oh and if there are any problems with this, email us and I will get on it right away.

[gamer4life27]

Cool. I can't wait to see all the new updates and everything that is going to be put into place to get rid of these spammers.

Thanks for all your work into this guys.

Edit: I didn't see a captcha when I used the quick reply button.

[deathcard71]

i'm not gonna link the thread but this is absolutely ridiculous. i have constant ad's F***ING up my poker games because this forum can't clean house.
WTF!!!!

*i sent this message to support. putting it here also.
if you want this forum to grow, something has to be done about the constant spam. they have it set up so when you open a thread you get hit with pop-up ad's.

this spam is the most ruthless i have come across. my pop-up blocker was unable to stop them. and clicking the X in the top right corner only opened more pop-ups.

I'm really pissed off right now and if something isn't done immediately then i will never post, read, or open this forum ever again.

[C8H10N4O2]

i'm not gonna link the thread but this is absolutely ridiculous. i have constant ad's F***ING up my poker games because this forum can't clean house.
WTF!!!!

*i sent this message to support. putting it here also.
if you want this forum to grow, something has to be done about the constant spam. they have it set up so when you open a thread you get hit with pop-up ad's.

this spam is the most ruthless i have come across. my pop-up blocker was unable to stop them. and clicking the X in the top right corner only opened more pop-ups.

I'm really pissed off right now and if something isn't done immediately then i will never post, read, or open this forum ever again.

Before you edited your post to say if something wasn't done immediately you'd leave, the thread was removed. It isn't there anymore. I'm still not sure exactly what happened, as I haven't gotten any pop-ups, but I'm not sure. This forum has become a heck of a lot cleaner than what it was. I would imagine that all the big name forums at one time had similarly issues as they grew and got more traffic as it becomes a hot spot for spammers until they develop security measures against this kind of stuff. It seems like it is a pretty difficult cat and mouse game.

Additionally, there was nothing embedded in his message. A while back we had a user that caused a pop-up, and the higher ups here fixed it to where that was disabled. I still just don't see how it is possible his post caused the pop-ups. There is simply nothing in his post that would indicate any foul-play (other than his lack of ability to read how you get into a PTOTW).

[liladypokerpro]

I checked out the thread and also did not find any tags or scripting or anything, and also haven't received any pop ups. My blocker notifies me anytime it blocks something, and I haven't even gotten so much as a notification.

Did you possibly visit another website prior to returning to the Rakeback forums? If not then I'm not sure what's going on.

[andrewK]

deathcard71:

whoa whoa, calm down. First, how can we tell what thread you are talking about if you don't link us, even to our support? Please give a link to that thread so we can check ourselves.

Second, aside from an unknown bug in vBulletin, there is no way to post javascript or frames in a post. Are you sure you didn't have other tabs open that could have launched these popups? What browser are you running? Have you done a spyware check recently? There are sooo many things that can cause popups to, well, pop up.

Third, we are doing all we can about the spam problem. All forums, as they increase in popularity, have these same problems. A lot of these spam messages are from actual humans, not bots, so there really isn't much we can do to stop it, just have to delete it fast enough and then ban the user so it just isn't profitable for them to spam us anymore. We have a small army of moderators who can remove these threads and a lot of anti-bot protection. People freak out when they see a spam thread but I am sure if you wait 10 minutes it will be gone.

I will conclude by saying I am 95% sure this popup you got was not trigged from without our website. Also, by the way you described the popup, it sounds like you are running a very old version of Internet Explorer as your browser. May I suggest a modern browser such as firefox: http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/firefox/firefox.html which will block abusive javascript. Last, please, it is so much easier to read your posts and understand if you just say things clearly without the huge letters and the crazyness. We *do* read the posts and the emails, you don't have to yell at us, we honestly are doing everything we can and thinking of ways to do even more.

[Mika Ollila]

I checked out the thread and also did not find any tags or scripting or anything, and also haven't received any pop ups.

This thread in questions was soft deleted to our forum's thrash bin.

1. I checked all posts and did not find any tags in them.
2. I checked that the forum in question has HTML disabled in the admin section.
3. Did not get any popups myself.

So there is a possibility that your own computer might have a virus or something that is generating popups. Please try running for example this free spyware removal tool: http://www.safer-networking.org/

A while back we had a user that caused a pop-up, and the higher ups here fixed it to where that was disabled. I still just don't see how it is possible his post caused the pop-ups.

True. We had one forum where posting of HTML code within the post was left on by accident, and that allowed someone to add flash script inside the post that made popups. Posting of HTML was disabled after that was brought to our attention.