I think it is bots but not sure. Pretty easy for them to do this because they are getting me every night. Its really annoying. Why the oxwall programers are not replying to any spam post is getting me. This forum was spammed today in the general chat so they are also being spammed. OXWALL set up
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Fake members appearing on website | Forum
Thomas
Sep 12 '12
Got spammed again this is getting out of control!!!! every half hour we are getting spammed
Richard Carr
Sep 12 '12
Ah ok i first thought they must be bypassing email verifications or not even using an e-mail address to set up the account but they are using hotmail accounts and 1 or 2 of them were not verified on my site, that's seems strange to me!!! how do you turn on admin approval?
Douglas
Sep 12 '12
Its a bot. Useragent is not a browser.
It's owned by a member of this forum, or at least someone thats been here before.
ACTIVATE mandatory user approvals like i suggested. It has solved my problem and all i have to do is log in a couple times a day to approve or delete new members that are waiting for approval.
No more spam at my site now at all. NONE
Douglas
Sep 12 '12
Vicki, i'm trying Pauls .htaccess mod now to see if it works. I'll let you know if it works against this particular spammer. I have to wait until they try to access my site again.
If it doesn't work, i'll write one that does.
Douglas
Sep 12 '12
Thanks Paul, i've worked with htaccess many times over the last 15 years.
I have owned forums and other sites that required user form input and have had this same problem before.
This spammer bot is getting through the captcha AND email verification, so either requiring admin approval for new members or blocking with htaccess is probably the best cure for this.
The problem with htaccess is that with most bot programs, including a crawler i own, the operator can change the user agent in seconds.
Douglas
Sep 12 '12
Yeah we have to try something. This spammer is just ruining everyones website. :\
We'll figure it out..
The Forum post is edited by Douglas Sep 12 '12
Douglas
Sep 12 '12
Roles are what i tried first. I made the default FREE role not have permission to do anything except browse the site, then i made a VIP role for people i have confirmed are real users and not bots. But that required new members to private message me for permission to post things.
What's your idea?
Douglas
Sep 12 '12
LOL i see you signed up at my site. I saw a new user and got excited because i thought it was the bot and i had his user agent string finally. :\
Douglas
Sep 13 '12
From what i can see so far, the best way to keep these bots at bay is to just require admin approval for new members. A shame really as it will require a bit of manual work and real members wont be able to post immediately, but it does work to keep bots out.
Vicki
Sep 14 '12
Thanks for your testing Douglas. I suppose we will all have to be patient to see what the Oxwall team can do. It is affecting their own website so I can only guess it would be in their interest to fix it....eventually...
Pete
Sep 14 '12
So many people or being hit by the same spammer,or bot on Oxwall ,i think its somebody on here that is doing this,with the help of a mod that thy have made.Just my view
Pete
Sep 14 '12
If anyone would like this program, before store approval then PM me, and i will send it over to you :)
Sent you pm (Thanks)
Richard Carr
Sep 14 '12
As far as I am aware, some person posted how to do something along these lines on this forum, and
Purusothaman Ramanujam told him it was stupid to post it on a public forum as a hacker would use it...although cant find the post now...
Douglas
Sep 14 '12
So many people or being hit by the same spammer,or bot on Oxwall ,i think its somebody on here that is doing this,with the help of a mod that thy have made.Just my view
I doubt its a mod or any other part of the team that's responsible. Probably just a spammer that found this software on google and downloaded it to look for weaknesses.
According to my server stats, my #1 search term is "join our fast growing community find new friends date up share photo and video enjoy!" so its a spammer using google to search for oxwall installs and then lauching a bot made to spam those sites...
Douglas
Sep 14 '12
Im trying out Pauls SpamIP program now. As soon as the bot signs up again, ill have his IP address to block.
Ill keep yall posted on what happens..
