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Greg Amy
10-08-2013, 09:16 AM
Anyone know how to block specific IP blocks from this forum? Most of this louis vitton and nfl jerseys spam is coming from a common IP block in China.

This forum software is ages old and I've gotten zero response from "webmaster". - GA

Matt93SE
10-08-2013, 11:01 AM
http://www.vbulletin.com/forum/forum/vbulletin-legacy-versions-products/legacy-vbulletin-versions/vbulletin-3-5-how-do-i-questions-and-troubleshooting/184961-can-i-block-or-ban-an-ip

Try that. Been a while since I've messed with vBulletin- I use SMF on my own sites now. What about doing some 'human interaction test' to require an intelligent response to a question while registering. not just the little graphic "what is this word" crap that nobody can read- I hate those.
something like the prod site or another similar thing that requires a very small amount of common sense to enter the answer.

Greg Amy
10-08-2013, 11:09 AM
Doesn't look like I have the access...

Matt93SE
10-08-2013, 11:41 AM
Don't know what level of access you have here- usually that requires 'super-mod' or site admin access for vBulletin.

Of the VB forums I'm a moderator on, I can ban a single IP address, but I don't think I can ban a range of them. I always left that up to the other guys that were more aggressive in dealing with spam and spent my time dealing with rude people that needed a spanking.

Greg Amy
10-09-2013, 12:39 PM
And I have to say, I find it seriously perplexing that when I got to delete these threads, with titles like "luis vitton hanbags and a free nfl jersey", in a forum about motorsports, that some of them have 6, 7 views.

Why?

Terry Hanushek
10-09-2013, 01:26 PM
Greg

Apparently online shopping was more pervasive than we thought :D

T

Greg Amy
10-09-2013, 01:37 PM
There would be a whole lotta fun going on if I could figure out which one of you rat bastards keeps reading threads about louis vitton handbags...just sayin'...

Ed Funk
10-09-2013, 02:50 PM
:rolleyes:

Ed Funk
10-09-2013, 08:22 PM
They match my shoes.

lawtonglenn
10-09-2013, 09:54 PM
...not just the little graphic "what is this word" crap that nobody can read- I hate those.
...

I heard an interview last weekend with the guy who invented the "captcha"

He was a bit embarrassed about it, knowing that everyday 200 million captchas are filled out worldwide, and at 10 seconds each that represents 500,000 hours wasted productivity EACH DAY

Z3_GoCar
10-10-2013, 12:31 AM
There would be a whole lotta fun going on if I could figure out which one of you rat bastards keeps reading threads about louis vitton handbags...just sayin'...

Don't be hate'n Greg or I won't take you to the Coach Bag outlet in Gilroy, CA :o

JLawton
10-10-2013, 07:42 AM
And I have to say, I find it seriously perplexing that when I got to delete these threads, with titles like "luis vitton hanbags and a free nfl jersey", in a forum about motorsports, that some of them have 6, 7 views.

Why?

I'm always hoping to find porn............

Greg Amy
10-10-2013, 07:55 AM
I'm always hoping to find porn............
When someone is looking on ImprovedTouring.com to find porn...well...

240zdave
10-10-2013, 08:36 AM
I heard an interview last weekend with the guy who invented the "captcha"

He was a bit embarrassed about it, knowing that everyday 200 million captchas are filled out worldwide, and at 10 seconds each that represents 500,000 hours wasted productivity EACH DAY

The really fascinating part of that interview was what he decided to do after he calculated how many man hours were involved. He developed a way to use the captchas to translate books from English to another language, so every time we type in a captcha, we are translating a small part of a book. His response to the question of how long would it take to translate all of Wikipedia was about 80 hours. :blink:

Greg Amy
10-10-2013, 09:03 AM
They also use Captcha to "translate" OCR'd (scanned) books where the words are not legible to the computer. So each time we do one of those we're actually typing in all the characters to some old book/manuscript (that's why we see such oddball words/characters show up). - GA

Terry Hanushek
10-10-2013, 12:06 PM
Just think how many books Louis Vuitton has translated all by himself

T

lawtonglenn
10-10-2013, 09:46 PM
When someone is looking on ImprovedTouring.com to find porn...well...

.

JLawton
10-11-2013, 08:14 AM
When someone is looking on ImprovedTouring.com to find porn...well...


My ex used to call sites like this "car porn".............

Dano77
10-11-2013, 10:16 AM
Glenns picture is cross breeding.

Greg Amy
10-14-2013, 10:02 PM
Ok, so now 15 of you "guys" clicked on a spammer topic about lipstick...???

Not that there's anything WRONG with that but...seriously...???

240zdave
10-18-2013, 09:40 AM
Got another one in Southeast Division this morning.

240zdave
10-25-2013, 08:00 AM
Most of the fresh posts this morning appear to be spam.

erlrich
10-25-2013, 09:58 AM
Not sure what's been going on these past couple of months, but I've deleted more spam posts in that time than I have since the new forums opened.

bonespec
10-26-2013, 06:03 PM
Same thing is happening on my home forum. Normally between 4a and 6a ET.

When they make the post they stay logged in to see if anyone comments on it.

Greg Amy
11-04-2013, 08:09 AM
WTF?? Today I woke up to dozens of spam on the board. I'm really getting tired of dealing with this.

In order to perform upgrades and gain more administrative access, I've been offered the opportunity to take over this board. But I'm not going to do it on my own dime. If there's interest here to do this, I'd entertain thoughts about creating a PayPal account and making this a community-supported board. For example, upgrading the software is about $250, and we'd have to pay for domain registration/transfer, as well as web server space to host it. I'm guessing we're looking at ~$1000/year plus upgrades. Otherwise I'm on the edge of just letting this go as is and you'll just have to deal with the increasing amounts of spam.

Let me hear your thoughts.

- GA

Dave Zaslow
11-04-2013, 09:08 AM
Greg,

I would gladly support you taking over what Suloff started so long ago. I also like the voluntary self-assessment for $. You may want to contact Richard Welty to assist in setting all this up. I bellieve he has done this for other forums.

DZ

Andy Bettencourt
11-04-2013, 12:04 PM
We can't just add one more 'are you human' step to the registration or is that the software upgrade that is needed?

Greg Amy
11-04-2013, 12:59 PM
We can't just add one more 'are you human' step to the registration or is that the software upgrade that is needed?
Not without taking full control. We don't have that level of admin and current owner has no interest in investing any time or money into the forum. - GA

stevestratton
11-04-2013, 01:19 PM
Greg, I'll donate $100.00 to the cause. This forum is worth it for me.

Ed Funk
11-04-2013, 01:22 PM
Start the paypal account, I'm already sending $100 to each of half dozen other forums. What's one more? Then you're down to needing $900.

Greg Amy
11-04-2013, 01:48 PM
Thanks for the support. I won't open an account just yet, as I want to investigate options. Your public declarations of support are useful in that regard. If I choose to go that way I'll let you know. - GA

erlrich
11-04-2013, 01:58 PM
I'm in, for both the upgrade and the management change. I would also hope, considering we have 300+ real members who have been active within the past 6 months, that we could get 20-30 willing to pitch in; that would get the per capita contribution down to a more reasonable (I know - subjective...) $50 or so. I'm good for up to $100 though.

jwasilko
11-04-2013, 03:13 PM
Greg: I'm in for donation.

Also, I'm a domain registrar/reseller and would be happy to take care of the domain fees.

-j

Matt Rowe
11-07-2013, 01:52 AM
I'm in as well to support such an valuable tool for the IT community. Plus, you just can't put a price on this kind of entertainment.

Knestis
11-07-2013, 06:33 AM
Ikke over brunmulberry vesker Ikke over brun.

K

Ron Earp
11-07-2013, 07:40 AM
I could easily fire up another Improved Touring forum using VB, but we would not have all of this content without the current owner's blessing.

JLawton
11-07-2013, 08:09 AM
I'm in Greg.

Greg Amy
11-07-2013, 08:13 AM
I'm in Greg.
Commas are important, my friend...

:happy204:

erlrich
11-07-2013, 10:29 AM
Commas are important, my friend...

:happy204:

Depends, doesn't it?

mossaidis
11-07-2013, 10:29 AM
I'm in Greg.

Sounds "romantical".

Matt93SE
11-07-2013, 04:18 PM
Greg,
I have paid for webhosting for my own site for several years and only use a tiny fraction of the bandwidth and server space available to me. (I supposedly have unlimited bandwidth and space available...)

If it doesn't blow my hosting fees out of the water, I'll be happy to hoste the site and give you (and whoever else deemed necessary) admin rights to the forum so it can be maintained properly.

Can you get some info on the current space/bandwidth requirements?
My account can currently load any of these software packages: (I have two small-traffic forums running on SMF currently)

vBulletin Forums (Demo= free, full version $$???)

Simple Machines Forum
2.0.5

phpBB
3.0.12

bbPress
1.1

PunBB
1.4.2

Vanilla Forums
2.0.18.8

JLawton
11-08-2013, 08:52 AM
Commas are important, my friend...

:happy204:


Fruadian slip??.............. maybe.................



:D




.

Ron Earp
11-10-2013, 08:11 PM
I hope we figure something out soon. I'm getting tired of deleting spam and banning mo fos from this site every time I log on.

Greg Amy
11-10-2013, 08:44 PM
Yup, I'm doing 6-10 per day, and I'm sure Earl and Andy are too.

Still waiting to hear back from Mr IT.COM.

Edit: and if you need at the bottom of the main page "welcome new member" and the nickname is random characters, just pre-banninate it. I'm noticing that they're creating accounts and then coming back 8-10 days later and posting their spam. Probably trying to get around other forums' "no posting for 7 days" limits.

Greg Amy
11-10-2013, 10:49 PM
I see I'm not the only one pre-banninating visitors that show up on the bottom of the main page...;)

There's many more of them than us, but at least we can have fun playing whack-a-mole.

- GA

bonespec
11-11-2013, 03:22 PM
8-10 of then lurking right now.....

Just sell out to AutoGuide and nohing will be done about it.

Greg Amy
11-11-2013, 03:29 PM
Those have already been banninated. Guess they can still log in, but not seeing any spam from them...

I've been taking the u= links and selecting various users with random characters and banning them. The technique seems to be create an account, wait a few days, then spam. So I pre-ban (when I have time) and that seems to have helped.

http://www.improvedtouring.com/forums/member.php?u=24608

Greg Amy
11-12-2013, 02:44 PM
Good news/bad news.

Good news: Mr IT.COM and I have exchanged some emails, and on my request he has disabled new user registrations on the forum. We were getting around two dozen new accounts per day, all spammers. This will allow us to catch up with all the pending accounts that are coming back soon to spam, and eventually get ahead.

Further, he is going to investigate existing anti-spam options on the current version of the VBulletin software.

Bad news: Mr IT.COM has disabled all new user registrations. Not optimal, but maybe we'll re-enable when we get a handle on those anti-spam options.

News to follow as I get it.

- GA

mossaidis
11-12-2013, 03:56 PM
thanks tGA

erlrich
11-12-2013, 04:33 PM
Is there any way to ban members in mass? Just doing a search of members who have joined since 11/1 gives about 130 results; most of those have zero posts. Going back to 9/1 takes it to 1k+ members, again mostly non-posting. Some appear to be legit, but many appear to be computer generated. Too many to ban one at a time for sure.

Terry Hanushek
11-12-2013, 04:45 PM
Greg

Thanks for continuing to follow-up. There are definitely remedies - captchas, challenge questions, membership moderation available. I hope that we get this problem squared away pretty soon - my closet is full of Louis Vuitton bags and I don't need any more. :D

Terry

Greg Amy
11-12-2013, 05:28 PM
Earl, could not find any way to mass-ban. What functions did you use to find the users by date?

Terry, hope those functions are available in this version, it's pretty far behind...I can't even remember the last time it was updated.

erlrich
11-12-2013, 06:09 PM
EWhat functions did you use to find the users by date?

I just went to Community-->Members List-->Search Members-->Advanced Search, then used "Join Date" fields as filters.

Greg Amy
11-13-2013, 08:14 AM
Aaaahhh...woke up to no spam at all...nice.

Terry Hanushek
11-13-2013, 08:57 AM
Greg


Terry, hope those functions are available in this version, it's pretty far behind...I can't even remember the last time it was updated.

I'm pretty sure they are available. We have used captchas on another BBS for 5-6 years.

I'm not sure that we are that far behind. We are vB 3.8.2. The brown board is vB 3.7.2 and Apex is on vB 3.87.

Terry

Greg Amy
11-13-2013, 01:37 PM
Lovin' it. Go to the "Who's Online" page:

http://www.improvedtouring.com/forums/online.php

...and look at the number of spammers that are getting the 'stop sign' (can't create threads) or the 'yield sign' (can't register).

Suck it.