Just wondering if there is a way to delete spam on this forum?? I HATE SPAM!!

Yes, double-click on the "x minutes ago" text. But you must know the password.

I've got an idea for Philipp: what about letting users vote againts a post/topic? If it meets a rate > 80% in the first hour and more than 16 unique votes, the post will become hidden (you'll see the author and the first words) and the posts will go to a new section called Recycle This. If many people report the posts/topic as valid, they'll go back to their state.

Hey.. that's a great idea!!

Thanks guys... yeah, I'll keep the anti-spam button an option for the future. Right now the best way to deal with when you see massive spam attacks is to email me. For smaller spam posts, the best thing is to ignore them as I usually clean up the forum completely every day. I also have anti-spam measurements for the attack like the current one, which also hit my email inbox with these weird messages, e.g. IP and keyword blocking. Let's see how this develops.

yeah, the best bet is too iggy it and dont get involved with the post.

[moved from "This Forum Is Under Attack!!"]

http://aycu09.webshots.com/image/1608/1060306517400739731_rs.jpg

i was bare witness to a spam attack!!
those damn spammers..

i was witness too.. in fact for an instant it seemed like there was more spam than legit stuff...

I'm trying hard to add keywords and IPs to the blacklist and delete a lot. I really wonder where the spammers are coming from – all their IPs are from Turkey. It's possible there's some T*rkish newspaper or such who had the stupid idea to connect me to a Bl*gspot porn bl*g, and now people think this is the right place to complain.

<<i was witness too.. in fact for an instant it seemed like there was more spam than legit stuff...>>

yeah..
and what odd about it, is that they are saying to shut down some B,log or something.. but this B,log theyre talking about doesnt exist!

Yes, the bl*g does exist, but I blocked the URL here... so now they're posting variations.

why here?!

<Yes, the bl*g does exist, but I blocked the URL here..>

Good for you!!!

Apparently someone sent out an email to a mailing list of some sort. I got a copy by now. Someone sent a long email telling people that in order to get rid of the pr0n bl0g (apparently, I don't know the exact text's meaning as it's not English), they should both contact me by email – citing my email – and post a message here – citing this bl0g's "create thread" URL (which I changed in the meantime).

i think you should block the "Start new thread" option..for a day or so

I thought about that, but then they might just spam the individual threads. I'll see...

So now you can't write b lo g, B logspo t or Tu rkis h ?

Maybe you should've just block that URL. All the messages had it.

there's more blocked words than that. I imagine some carefully selected words which have been recurring are chosen. Philipp mentioned that he also had to disable indicating exactly what was blocked.

I'm willing to be a little patient for this spam nonsense to die down. And if it doesn't, maybe we should all fight back! :)

There's over are a dozen words that were added. The URL appeared in variations whenever I blocked one variation.

take this page down temporarily, philipp.. and put up a bunch of ads.. :-)-

> And if it doesn't, maybe we should all fight back! :)

I have several emails from the mailing list, including the name & email of the originator of at least one of these mass mails... but this person may be part of a larger friend-of-a-friend scheme.

philipp, check the chat. the spammers moved there...

<I thought about that, but then they might just spam the individual threads. I'll see...>

you were right..... *insert disgusting emoticon here*

Thanks Ionut. Removed the chat for a while.

umm so shut down the entire forum..
for one day..

why did you remove the chat?
the spammers will spam again in the forum..
let them stay in the chat zone

Interesting argument David. The chat is back. Kids need a place to play :)

lol..
glad i could help :)

those guys are really going at it.. in the chat room...

I tried to talk to them but it's completely useless – they don't understand the situation. Probably the only line worth repeating is...

Here is not Google – contact Google here: http://www.google.com/support/bin/request.py

yeah thats ok.. they need a place to play , they want attention , but are not going to get it here :)-

Right!!
Were strong Philipp! and were with ya!

you could just block the entire T u rk ish ip address range, until this thing calms down.

> you could just block the entire T u rk ish ip
> address range, until this thing calms down.

Yes, unfortunately I had to do that finally. I'm not sure if this is entirely correct but I blocked:

85.96.* -> 85.111.*
81.214.* -> 81.215.*
88.220.* -> 88.255.*

How can you get a free list of IPs for a country?

I didn't find a good list but I did some checking on the forum and chat IPs and then also googled a bit. The best thing probably would be to have some nice MySQL database with PHP code as free download... so that you could block by country name.

ip to country:

http://ip-to-country.webhosting.info/

you can download a csv file for importing into a mysql database.

This looks great. I'm currently integrating this database.

Also: http://www.maxmind.com/app/geoip_country

Did the attack die down at all yet, philipp???

Kirby, I suppose the attack is still going on but our defense mechanisms work. I'll check in a couple of days what happens when I unblock the IP range...

Good for you, Philipp!! The forum is much nicer when you don't have to weed through the spam!! :-)

yeah..
and if theyll start again were here!! :)