Of Spam, Robots, and Captchas

[DzM]

We've been recently inundated with a lot of spam. So much that it's once again become impracticable to manage the volume by hand. The automated checking has returned, and with that will be the small number of false positives that will prevent your legitimate messages from getting through. I'm sorry about that.

[DzM]

We've been recently inundated with a lot of spam. So much that it's once again become impracticable to manage the volume by hand. The automated checking has returned, and with that will be the small number of false positives that will prevent your legitimate messages from getting through. I'm sorry about that.

I've spent half the day cajoling our gorgon. Hopefully she will no longer be as friendly to the spam we've been getting. To test her new attitude I've reverted the automated checking I mentioned above. With luck it will not have to be turned back on.

[old barney greyheron]

What does all that stoof mean?

[soulfinger]

I've spent half the day cajoling our gorgon.

Ooh er Missus. I have no idea what that means but it sounds disgraceful.

[Clash Cadillac]

I've spent half the day cajoling our gorgon.

Please keep your sexual practices to yourself...

[DzM]

It seems our raft has been being hit heavily by a botnet trying to post spam. The spam hasn't been getting through, but earlier this evening the bots DID manage to gum up the plumbing pretty badly. Sorry about that.

Fortunately the bots appear to have a pretty distinctive signature once you go looking for it. When this signature is noticed by Gaz (our server) it will happily redirect the bot to some random Internet porn site. You're welcome random botnet. And for anyone that comes here and suddenly sees random Internet porn ... sorry about that. Unless you like it. In which case you're welcome too.

[NewJerseyRich]

....... And for anyone that comes here and suddenly sees random Internet porn ... sorry about that. Unless you like it. In which case you're welcome too.

thereby giving a whole new meaning to the term "pogoing"

[cagliostro]

It seems our raft has been being hit heavily by a botnet trying to post spam. The spam hasn't been getting through, but earlier this evening the bots DID manage to gum up the plumbing pretty badly. Sorry about that.

Fortunately the bots appear to have a pretty distinctive signature once you go looking for it. When this signature is noticed by Gaz (our server) it will happily redirect the bot to some random Internet porn site. You're welcome random botnet. And for anyone that comes here and suddenly sees random Internet porn ... sorry about that. Unless you like it. In which case you're welcome too.

So was it the internet porn that managed to gum up the plumbing or was it the result of int... ahh, never mind. I don't really want to know.

[DzM]

This particular botnet, when it visits with its offers of larger penises, will be greeted by being sent off to another web site that features many penises. No, the web site does not live on Gaz. The bots are simply told to go there (and I suspect they don't bother to follow the instructions so the humor is entirely lost on them).

[DzM]

We've been getting hit with a lot of spam over the last six weeks or so. The filters have blocked a lot, the filters have put a lot into moderation queues for us to approve, and the filters have let quite a bit through. Over the last six weeks we've been directly handling up to 50 spam posts a day. It's harder for us to deal with spam after its got through AND you will often see it before we can deal with it. Sorry about that.

In order to make our lives a little easier and keep you from being sullied with links for Louis Vitton bags and Hot Russian Women that Want To Date You, I've made the filters less forgiving than they were before. Rather than blocking new things once we notice a trend, we now require any guest posting that contains a link to have moderator approval. This will sometimes mean that guest posts will take several hours (or days in worst case scenarios) to appear. If a guest post looks spammy to us we're unlikely to put a lot of effort into verifying that it's not junk. If a you (a guest) post something and see a message about "requires moderator approval" and then the message never actually appears then it looked spammy to us and was dumped.

Some of you have guest alter-egos that post a lot. If your alter-ego's nuggets of awesome take a while to show up, or are blocked entirely, then please know it's (most likely) not malice behind it. Please contact me or Zuzana if you think something has gone really wrong, or have your alter-ego register. Spam filters for registered users are considerably less restrictive.

Kthanx!

[soulfinger]

People are not always who they say they are , even on Medusa?

Good work with that broom - you janitorial team of heroes.

[DzM]

:shock: People are not always who they say they are , even on Medusa?

Right, I know, right?

[Clash Cadillac]

You can let the SPAM from hot women that want to date me thru... can always use the ego boost.

[DzM]

Today we have had to "moderate" more than 200 messages that had been tagged as spam. Of them zero were actual content from guest users. This ration (100% noise, 0% content) is most often the case.

Beginning now messages that are flagged as possible spam from guests and newly registered users will arbitrarily be rejected. Sorry about that.

If you are a person that frequently posts as "guest" AND whose messages are frequently flagged as requiring moderator approval - sorry. In order to continue posting your messages (especially ones that contain links and/or images) you will need to register and post at least ten non-flagged messages.

If you are a guest (or a recently registered user) that feels false-negatives are happening way too often, please email me. kthanx.


[Note: In the time it took to write this message nine guest posts were flagged as spam and rejected. Zero of them are/were legitimate messages.]

[Update Nov 19: Since the time this chance has gone into place 2109 spam messages have been auto-rejected. As far as I can tell there have been zero false positives. Go team.]

[DzM]

Update on the success (or failure, depending on one's perspective) of this change.

Since Nov 17, 10:54PM PST 2584 spam messages have been automatically rejected without me or Zuzana having to interviene. In scrolling through the logs and messages (I haven't exhaustively examined each rejected message) I haven't seen any false positives. This is a 0% failure rate (with a sample size of 2500 a 1% failure rate would mean 25 legitimate posts got rejected). This is pretty awesome.

In scrolling through the logs I also see a historical trend of legitimate PMs from new members being blocked. That kinda sucks. You guys need to tell me these things! I'll be relaxing the PM spam filters a bit. Please let me know if you find yourself getting spam messages.