The spambot report thread

Post by **wardrich** » Sat Apr 16, 2016 12:09 am

Rwolf wrote:10 more spam today, likely from same source as before.

On another forum we had to vet new registered users before letting them post in public; there was some 40-50 spammers each day, looking valid on the surface, but the profiles were faked, stolen from hacked user databases & the post content was always spam. It kept up from august to november last year.

Cleaned up the mess. Banned all of the users, added common key words from the subjects and the URL roots to the spam word list.

Rwolf · Post by **Rwolf** » Sat Apr 16, 2016 7:24 am

17/4 Only seven new spams from the same source managed to avoid the filter today.

18/4 Fifteen more from the same Indonesian garbage heap today.

19/4 Nine new Indonesian spam. (so far)

(not listing the above)

Plus another returning spammer, wall of text-type:
http://www.dosgames.com/forum/profile.p ... le&u=13636

http://www.dosgames.com/forum/profile.p ... le&u=13648

Post by **MrFlibble** » Tue Apr 19, 2016 11:40 am

I've just Trash Heap'd about 20 threads made in the last two days.

Have you tried changing the CAPTCHA type used as countermeasure? A question with no easy to look up answer can do wonders.

Rwolf · Post by **Rwolf** » Wed Apr 20, 2016 5:40 am

20/4:
12 Indonesian spams today.

1 other spam:
http://www.dosgames.com/forum/profile.p ... le&u=13664

21/4:
8 Indonesian spam.

1 other spam (same one as yesterday):
http://www.dosgames.com/forum/profile.p ... le&u=13674

22/4:
10 Indonesian spam.

1 other spam (same pills as before)
http://www.dosgames.com/forum/profile.p ... le&u=13687

23-24/4
8 Indonesian spams (so far)

25/4
12 Indonesian spams

1 other spam (pills)
http://www.dosgames.com/forum/profile.p ... le&u=13708

26/4
8 Indonesian spams

plus 2 other spams from these boneheads:
http://www.dosgames.com/forum/profile.p ... le&u=13723
http://www.dosgames.com/forum/profile.p ... le&u=13486

---

A suggestion about the Indonesian crap:
What if you required at least some words in the post to match an English lexicon? None of the content seem to do so, what I can recall.

A *simple* filtering is to check the users profile, the web link gives the game away immediately, since they want to promote their site.

Rwolf · Post by **Rwolf** » Sat May 07, 2016 12:43 pm

The Indonesian language spam is for a webshop hosted in the US, administered from Canada. Obviously not intended for anyone here, so why spam in completely irrelevant areas, not likely they will find any customers anyway?

Quadko · Post by **Quadko** » Sat May 07, 2016 6:21 pm

I've wondered about that. Maybe it's pay per post, or hikes up their advertisable "# outlets we can reach" pitch?

Post by **MrFlibble** » Sun May 08, 2016 7:23 am

Rwolf wrote:Obviously not intended for anyone here, so why spam in completely irrelevant areas, not likely they will find any customers anyway?

Spam posts are never intended for forum users (you're probably encountered spam posts that are nothing but a mishmash of keywords and links - nothing readable). It's purely a SEO technique.

[Edit] Here's an even better article on this:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spamdexing

Rwolf · Post by **Rwolf** » Mon May 09, 2016 6:24 am

Thanks for the link, always interesting reads.

So what I gather from the link is that they hope to get a high number of *popular* sites linking to their *garbage* site, thus having their page ending high in search engines results for their products of 'Best Rotten Tomatoes', by the mere funcion of e.g. Google Bots scraping this and other sites to feed their search engines.

Ok, and the stopforumspam etc. sites? No good or not practical here?

Post by **MrFlibble** » Thu May 12, 2016 6:33 am

Rwolf wrote:Ok, and the stopforumspam etc. sites? No good or not practical here?

That's for the admins to decide. I don't get any more feedback from them than you do, and I can only Trash Heap the posts.

Rwolf · Post by **Rwolf** » Tue May 17, 2016 2:45 pm

A returning tinfoil-hat spammer: jamlieight
http://www.dosgames.com/forum/profile.p ... le&u=13824

(long time no see - at least a variation from the 'rotten wood' salesmen)

Banned account. Stripped spam URL from profile.

Rwolf · Post by **Rwolf** » Fri May 27, 2016 9:24 am

More tin-foil mad-hatter spamming: jamlinine
http://www.dosgames.com/forum/profile.p ... le&u=13833

Targetting audience: someone afraid of radio waves.

I note the name is concatenated with a number, the last two were jamli+eight/nine, expecting a spam from jamli+ten real soon now.

Post by **CPT Worm** » Fri May 27, 2016 4:29 pm

OHHHH NOOO
THE GOVERNMENT IS ON TO MEEEEEE
I WISH I DIDN'T DELETE THAT GUY'S POST ABOUT THE GPS JAMMERS
I THINK THEY'RE GOING TO G

Post by **MrFlibble** » Sun May 29, 2016 11:30 am

Just Trash Heaped a whoop-load of Indian spam (in English).

Rwolf · Post by **Rwolf** » Mon Jun 20, 2016 6:33 pm

A suspected pornsite spammer:

http://www.dosgames.com/forum/profile.p ... le&u=13863

The single post made (so far) has a link to a porn site.

Joris · Post by **Joris** » Tue Jun 21, 2016 6:23 am

Here's another one:

http://www.dosgames.com/forum/profile.p ... le&u=13855

Rwolf · Post by **Rwolf** » Mon Jun 27, 2016 4:46 pm

Suspected spammer, the only post made contains generic praise and a link to a dating site:

http://www.dosgames.com/forum/profile.p ... le&u=13869

Post by **MrFlibble** » Sat Jul 02, 2016 5:11 am

We're in the middle of a massive Korean spambot attack! I've just removed like five or six pages of spam threads to Trash Heap, but they keep coming! Someone shut down this user ASAP:
http://www.dosgames.com/forum/profile.p ... le&u=13883

Post by **wardrich** » Sat Jul 02, 2016 10:37 pm

MrFlibble wrote:We're in the middle of a massive Korean spambot attack! I've just removed like five or six pages of spam threads to Trash Heap, but they keep coming! Someone shut down this user ASAP:
http://www.dosgames.com/forum/profile.p ... le&u=13883

God damn... thanks for taking care of that one. I've banned the user. I'll see if I can update the spam words.

Rwolf · Post by **Rwolf** » Thu Jul 07, 2016 6:34 pm

Sells healthy drinks with too much spam in them.
http://www.dosgames.com/forum/profile.p ... le&u=13887

Post by **MrFlibble** » Fri Jul 08, 2016 9:05 am

Spammer with SEO link in profile:
http://www.dosgames.com/forum/profile.p ... le&u=13760

Status: BANNED. Stripped URL from profile