Rise of the Spambots

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#101

I’ve just had an epiphany about the spambots. As you may have noticed many of them don’t simply spam the forum, many create a profile with links and keywords.

I couldn’t figure out why until I realized something last night: Profiles on this forum as well as all major forums (Facebook, scifi.com, LinkedIn) are indexed by Google…which means even if the spambot never posts and includes a link to certain sites another click goes up in an index count. This is all an elaborate scheme to influence Google and other search engine results…not to try and get us to purchase this crap.

To see an example of what I am talking about I searched our records for banned users in the last month. #mirunga123 popped up. Plug that name into Google and search and you will see what I mean…this account is registered across multiple forums with the sole purpose of getting those profile links indexed.

I am now going to commence scrubbing our users one by one to ban anyone who may have never posted but has profile or siggy spam. Only 406 since October 1st. <sigh>

Frakking spambots. :mad:

If you happen to see one registering, listed as a new user or find a profile that has spam in it, PM either myself, Pike or Poofy. Please don’t PM all of us, it will lead to redundancy…just ping one of us and we will handle it as you can’t report a user who has no posts.

#102

Can we robots.txt out the profiles? I know that the spambots probably won’t realize that, but if it’s doable it should be an easy measure to implement, and might be effective long-term.

#103

The good news is that I tested the fact if they are banned their profiles no longer get indexed. Our only means of killing them is banning. I also would suspect the spambots test to see which sites give them a better bang for their buck. If we don’t give them what they need, perhaps we will see their numbers go down.

I am not sure if I fully understand what you mean by robots.txt out their profile, but I think banning them accomplishes the same goal.

#104

robots.txt lets you deny areas to webcrawlers. Google respects that, so if we don’t allow it to crawl the profiles (assuming that’s possible with VB’s configuration) it might make us less attractive.

#105

Ah. This sounds like a job for Chuck. Good call Pike.

#106

As someone who has written in this area of inquiry, this is probably the best way to go. There is a reason dropping spam on the forum is very valuable to a spammer. Single mentions on a vBulletin site get indexed in Google quite heavily.

The Google algorithm known as PageRank is pretty idiotic when it comes to handling sites using vBulletin and other such sites. A Centurion has more brains than that algorithm does in terms of assessing things. For all the different display options a system like vBulletin provides, a single post can show up for Google far beyond just one single instance.

With the inability of Google in handling web-based forums and the basis of PageRank being that popular pages should be at the top, this leads to where we are now. For a site operator, the question then becomes how to structure robots.txt. What should be cloaked and what should not be? That all depends upon what your site’s goals are.

#107

Out of curiosity I googled on this problem and found this page from a vB user having the same problem. Lists what he’s doing for spam:

http://www.snipe.net/2008/08/managing-registration-spam-in-vbulletin/

Don’t know if it will help but at least his information is recent.

#108

That looks like it will be very helpful. Thanks, Gryper.

#109

Cool! At least I did one helpful thing today. LOL And you’re welcome. I saw tons of spam on here early this morning and it was buggin me still once I got to work so I hit google. Hope some of the information will help and if more software is needed then maybe we can take up a collection to help with the cost.

#110

It’s about 3:30 am and it looks like the frakkin spambots are having a field day today…they’re all over the place. Frakkers.

#111

Yeah, dude, this is crazy. I never seen this many before.

BTW, do we just report it? That’s all we can do, right, just report it? Only the admins have the ability to kill?

Cuz I really wish I could kill these spam threads.

#112

I guess so…I read this thread a bit and it seems like the admins are trying different things…I just don’t like these morons invading our sweet world, you know ?

Now I know how the Aztecs felt !

#113

At least these spammers are not claiming to come in peace, offering us turkey and blankets.

#114

lol…:smiley:
baltar

#115

Yeah, only the admins and moderators can delete the threads and ban the “users.” Seriously, that is a crazy amount of spam, isn’t it? It’s like spam for every interest.

#116

Thank you to everyone for reporting on the recent wave of spam. Chuck has plans on upgrading the forum soon which will add additional levels of protection.

For now, the spam has been deleted and the user banned.

#117

And there was much rejoicing…

#118

Do you need volunteers to help moderate the spam? I’m willing to give some time to the GWC if it will help keep the board clean. I’m sure others are too until the upgrade.

#119

That is very generous, thank you. If we didn’t have a short term solution in place we would take you up on it. Hopefully after the upgrade and a few tweaks the barbarians will be held at the gate.

#120

um…

Historically speaking, that may not be the best analogy to use. :eek: