The Wastegate is ruined!

mandymoochops · Post by **mandymoochops** » Tue Mar 13, 2007 7:26 pm

Ok call me cynical however at the bottom of the page you can see whos online and who the newest registered users are? Well theres a new user called drdrdrugt - who wants to bet me a fiver he's selling viagra and a post comes on here sometime very soon!!!

Big Brother · Post by **Big Brother** » Tue Mar 13, 2007 7:29 pm

That spammer has already posted on here, I removed their thread earlier today

mandymoochops · Post by **mandymoochops** » Tue Mar 13, 2007 7:43 pm

oh pooh - bang goes my fiver then!!!

hailesmail · Post by **hailesmail** » Thu Mar 15, 2007 9:53 am

My fix on my own site of changing the forum folder is still holding up and that was done on the 6th of December, while it won't last forever it only takes 5 mins to do and seems to work well

I haven't had a single dodgy registration in that time.

pol · Post by **pol** » Thu Mar 15, 2007 1:20 pm

Why do they target the wastegate? Is there a standard set up in phphphphphbbbbb? Like an off topic section that always sits in the same place / has a certain name in the code? Make another wastegate and rename the other Spam?!

Surely you clever geeks can fix it?!

pol

stu chacks · Post by **stu chacks** » Thu Mar 15, 2007 1:41 pm

pol wrote:
Surely you clever geeks can fix it?!

pol

Now that's what I call a backhanded compliment!

Come on Daniel, together with VBB I'm sure you two can do something to stop the spammers, it's really put me off the forum and being a bit of a technophobe I'm even a bit worried about ending up with it finding it's way onto my pc/mailbox, even if it doesn't it's bloody annoying for sure.

No need to run a poll on this issue I reckon.

Stu.

martinholmesuk · Post by **martinholmesuk** » Thu Mar 15, 2007 2:24 pm

It's now taking other parts of the forum owner. One has even posted 8000+ spam messages on here.

Joolz · Post by **Joolz** » Thu Mar 15, 2007 3:58 pm

come on clever geeks......find a solution!

It's certainly seems to have put a lot of us oldtimers off posting...the place doesn't feel the same anymore

Big Brother · Post by **Big Brother** » Thu Mar 15, 2007 4:05 pm

I tried hailsmailâ€™s solution on my forum and can confirm it works perfectly. It took me a couple of minutes thatâ€™s all and all it would require on the site is changing the link on the main site to the new forum URL. For example the forums current URL is volvo480.dragons.org.uk/forum/index.php by altering this slightly say like volvo480.dragons.org.uk/480forum/index.php the data base of forums spammers have will be rendered useless as the URL will not be the same, anyone who has the forum in their favourites will have to update the link but itâ€™s a small price to pay to get rid of this problem. The downside to doing this is the links on search engines like google will also be useless.

However it would require access to the forum directory in order to do this, Daniel doesnâ€™t have this access the one person who does is Gaz

pol wrote:Why do they target the wastegate? Is there a standard set up in phphphphphbbbbb?

As said before I think it may be because it has â€˜Off Topicâ€™ in the title, the Wastegate on my forum was the most attractive to spammers too.

pol wrote:Surely you clever geeks can fix it?!

Fixing it is the easy bit, getting access to fix it is the hard bit.

pol · Post by **pol** » Thu Mar 15, 2007 4:39 pm

That only sounds like a temporary fix if you ask me! Might be a good idea after you have implemented a way of stopping it...

As the wastegate gets hit harder, surely you could create a new 'other wastegate' that doesn't appear under 'off topic' and the wastegate could be hidden / removed / something...

I know i'm not the owner / admin or anything, but it doesn't seem like forum science!

It is a pest to an otherwise great forum - I know... Lets move back to the old forum!

pol

Big Brother · Post by **Big Brother** » Thu Mar 15, 2007 4:53 pm

pol wrote:That only sounds like a temporary fix if you ask me!

In theory if the URL was changed periodically then it would serve as a permanent fix because the spammers data base is only updated every so often.

pol wrote:As the wastegate gets hit harder, surely you could create a new 'other wastegate' that doesn't appear under 'off topic' and the wastegate could be hidden / removed / something...

This wouldnâ€™t change anything, they post in the â€˜Off Topicâ€™ area because they think their threads may not be removed, if we remove the wastegate they will only attack the new one or somewhere else on the forum.

pol wrote:It is a pest to an otherwise great forum - I know... Lets move back to the old forum!

Again this would make no difference, EZ, PHPBB, YABB etc all forums have this problem, its modifications or just simple adjustments like mentioned above that stop spam.

welsh-dragon · Post by **welsh-dragon** » Thu Mar 15, 2007 6:42 pm

I agree with Stu on this; I can't be bothered to post much lately because of all the spammers.
If Gaz is the ONLY person who can get this sorted, can I make a direct appeal to him on behalf of all of us proud members to make himself available to get this done.
I appreciate he's very busy but if he doesn't have the time, maybe he should speak with VBB to allow him the access to get things fixed.

And no, I'm not holding my breath.........................

alfonzobonzo · Post by **alfonzobonzo** » Fri Mar 16, 2007 2:44 pm

i kinda only speed read this post so apologise if its already been suggested or not relevant.

would having to enter one of those random letter number things in order to submit a post stop it?

as you can tell I'm no expert..

PS, hello everyone

Joolz · Post by **Joolz** » Fri Mar 16, 2007 4:06 pm

also, dont know if anyones noticed but if you go to the memberlist here on the forum (link at the top of the page) we have had over 250 new members joined in the last week

all with website links still displayed............

Big Brother · Post by **Big Brother** » Fri Mar 16, 2007 4:25 pm

alfonzobonzo wrote: would having to enter one of those random letter number things in order to submit a post stop it?

Already in place, stops spambots but not people.

Joolz wrote:also, dont know if anyones noticed but if you go to the memberlist here on the forum (link at the top of the page) we have had over 250 new members joined in the last week all with website links still displayed............

Thats another problem, while they are getting their hits from Google for having the link displayed the members list is also a rich source of email addresses for the spammers, one forum I know of has removed access to the members list for users (mods and admins can still see it) to stop spammers getting access to users email addresses.

hailesmail · Post by **hailesmail** » Fri Mar 16, 2007 11:25 pm

That only sounds like a temporary fix if you ask me! Might be a good idea after you have implemented a way of stopping it...

3 months already for my forum

and as it's so easy and quick to do, it's something you can continue to do periodically.

If you do do it on this forum, remember to set the script path in the admin config before you change the directory name or you won't get back into the admin menu without tweaking the sql database directly.

martinholmesuk · Post by **martinholmesuk** » Sun Mar 18, 2007 10:16 pm

I have made Daniel (Admin/owner/blond guy) aware via email.

Website · Post by **coyote1980** » Mon Mar 19, 2007 7:12 pm

martinholmesuk wrote:I have made Daniel (Admin/owner/blond guy) aware via email.

Here I am,

not being online as often as one can expect from the person theoretically in charge of the club...

But enough about that. I haven't deleted any threads the last three weeks, so don't know how threads end up getting lost. On advise of Adam I will create a subforum only visible to moderators where all spamming threads are to be banned to. That way we can determine if we, the moderators, or some other mysterious force, is removing the spam. This will not affect the normal forum use in any way, but if you see a topic of yours being removed against expectations then contact us and let us know things like the title and the start-date. Then we can see where it went.

Macaroon · Post by **Macaroon** » Mon Mar 19, 2007 8:44 pm

Hi DaniÃ«l. That sounds like a very good solution to the occasional, accidental removal of proper posts... which makes me happy.

...But it will still means lots of work for you guys and doesn't stop the spam getting on in the first place.

Big Brother · Post by **Big Brother** » Tue Mar 20, 2007 11:30 am

Glad to see you back here Daniel, my idea was to move spam threads to this hidden forum rather than delete them, then after a week delete them all together. Glad the idea has been approved.

@Daniel - If you have already created the forum can you change my permissions so I can access it.

Thanks

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