I am amazed by the skills of some people here

[yannbarvss]

Hi, Guys...!!!
 
I am new on your site and I am amazed by the skills of some people here...
not too sure if this is the right place to be posting this msg
 
Let me introduce myself first :
 
I am Yann, a webmaster and dive instructor, 27 years old.
 
i have many questions about music, web , PC and education...
 
Where i can post my messages...
 
So, thanks a lot!

[Paul Bonneau]

Hello Yann, yes there is quite an interesting group here. Welcome!

I am moving your post as this board is only for discussion of freedom movements.

[Jared]

I'm betting on a spambot.

[Thomas]

^

[NC Minuteman]

This is a spam bot!! I found the same post on another board. 
http://www.modernminuteman.net/forums/index.php?showtopic=1111&hl=

[Paul Bonneau]

So, educate me guys. How does a spambot work anyway? What's it trying to do, making this post? How to best defeat it?

It's weird that the freedom movement board gets so many spam posts. Just got two today...

[Richard]

Hey Paul,

I'll share what little I know.  These are actually robot spammers and not actual people.  The default CATCHPA for SMF and other forums has been cracked.  This allows them to scour the web for forums and sign up and post spam.  CATCHPA means ?completely automated public Turing test to tell computers and humans apart".  It's when they show a combination of letters in number rendered in an image and require you to enter it as text to register.

These bots can get pretty sophisticated now.  Many of them also run AIM bots that actually talk to people on instant messenger and convince them to sign up for adult sites "to see them on cam"  They then post the AIM SNs all over Myspace, or other personal sites. 

Spamming is still a huge industry that makes a lot of money, so naturally shady programmers get paid lots of money to write these advanced programs.

BTW, I don't really keep up to date or know much about forum software, but SMF should have updated CATCHPA's out now that aren't cracked.

[Paul Bonneau]

But I thought our email response  (giving the password) requires a human to be in the loop.

[Jack-O]

nope.  its in the code.  I've talked to those bots in chat rooms before and they are pretty convincing for the first 5 or 6 exchanges.  awesome programming there.

[laurel]

Aside from trying to up the security levels so the spam doesn't make it here in the first place, could I humbly request that anyone with post-deletion priveleges get rid of the spam completely when it shows up? It seems like some of it makes it a while before anybody gets around to deleting it, and since this is a family board the current selection of things like "Pop Star Jenifer Lopez: hardcore sex (movie inside)" is kind of out of place.

Perhaps some of the more active/trusted forum members could be given those sort of moderation priveleges for the purposes of spam control only?

Laurel

[Shawn]

Aside from trying to up the security levels so the spam doesn't make it here in the first place, could I humbly request that anyone with post-deletion priveleges get rid of the spam completely when it shows up? It seems like some of it makes it a while before anybody gets around to deleting it, and since this is a family board the current selection of things like "Pop Star Jenifer Lopez: hardcore sex (movie inside)" is kind of out of place.

Perhaps some of the more active/trusted forum members could be given those sort of moderation priveleges for the purposes of spam control only?

Laurel

I second the motion

[FSW Forum Administrator]

Right now there are four of us on admin and we do what we can to keep the trash cleaned up. On holiday weekends it can get a bit ripe as we are may be travelling and out of touch. A couple of boards have mods who are responsible for keeping that particular board clean.

That is also why you see the forum users numbers fluctuating so much. We delete accounts and ban IPs or domains as needed.

If any of the members wish to volunteer to be a mod for a particular board, we'd love to have the help. Contact Boston, Paul B or Lady Liberty, or myself.

 

[Paul Bonneau]

I added a couple of words to the censored dirty word list. Don't know how far we want to get into that, though. 

Joseph, I was wanting to look at the email we send to people wanting to register, but I can't find it in the admin controls. Can you tell me how to get there?

I'm thinking we may have a way to possibly defeat the spambots by putting some simple instructions in it or some other thing that only humans will be able to figure out.

There is some guy on the pending registration list with the email address something@gurvitsnojew.com. I went to that site and it is a Russian one. What do you think the chances are it's a spambot? 

[manfromnevada]

We have a dirty word list?
Can you share? I'm always looking to expand my vocabulary!

So how does this work? If we post with a forbidden word then it (the whole post) gets rejected? I wasn't aware of any censoring. This is news to me. Also, I thought this was an adult site, not a family oriented site. Didn't know we either had children or encouraged children on this forum.

Yeah, yeah, I know . . . It's for the children! 
Mac

[Paul Bonneau]

Every forum software has a dirty word list; it's just part of the package. Here, I will try one: f**k. See what the list does? A straight replacement of the word. I could have turned it into "porkfriendly".

Maybe we should have forum members PM me with suggested replacements for dirty words, that I will add to the list. That might be fun. Keep it clean, though. 

One can go back and forth with this stuff. On one hand, it is pretty silly to be censoring words among adults and even children old enough to participate here. On the other hand, dirty words do coarsen discourse, I guess you could say. As a product of the Marine Corps among other things, I used to cuss a lot. Well, a friend at work convinced me I could make my points more convincingly by dispensing with that. And I now think he's right. Most of the time I try to be good.