Looking for 'Forum Security Agents'

English as a Second Language Feedback, Comments and Suggestions
21

Hello Torsten,

This is indeed a very good idea. May I participate?

22

Please listen to my recording and respond with a voice message too. Many thanks.[YSaerTTEW443543]

TOEIC listening, photographs: A father canoeing with his son[YSaerTTEW443543]

23

Hello detest spammers as well and I also wish to joint the security agent crew.

Thanks
Nzuahp

24

let me correct myself as i meant to say,

Hello all,
I detest spammers as well and I also wish to join the security agent crew.

Thanks for understanding,
Nzuahp

25

Dear Nzuahp,

Many thanks for your interest in joining our Anti-Spam Force. We’ll send you more information via email soon.
Best regards,
Torsten[YSaerTTEW443543]

TOEIC listening, photographs: Winter wonderland[YSaerTTEW443543]

26

A few observations and suggestions on spambots:

  1. You’ve probably noticed already that they usually begin with “sorry for choosing” or “I apologize for choosing” or something like that.
  2. Perhaps you could also filter for posts that quote the thread’s title, as they often do; if I weren’t a spambot, I’d be hard pressed to find a reason for ever doing so. By filtering I mean having the message wait for approval by a moderator, or requiring the poster to fill in a captcha.
  3. At a certain wiki, I asked the moderators to do something about spammers’ continually deleting wiki pages and putting their links there instead; sometimes the page was gone within minutes of my having restored it. Their solution was to have anyone who posted a message containing external links solve a simple calculation, like 10-5=. I think it worked quite well; I have only had to delete a single spam edit in the last week or so.
  4. I am still in favour of captchas for new users (if they aren’t required already). Captcha’s for each new message are worse than the disease.
27

Then there is this user:
english-test.net/forum/searc … anetlalbag
He has only promoted a few sites on vocabulary, did not participate in any discussion as far as I can tell. His spam posts were all in April, except his latest post today. I would delete him, but he has no spam button; probably because he has registered several months ago.

28

Since a couple of days I get an error message when I click on the Spam button. I have idea what it means: [Edit: I am using Firefox, but the Spam button does work in IE; I suppose I messed up my FF; I hope I can fix it.]

Bad Request

Your browser sent a request that this server could not understand.
Size of a request header field exceeds server limit.

Cookie: __utma=85290701.1602179172.1256786003.1257001549.125708200.6;
__utmz=85290701.1256786003.1.1.utmcsr=(direct)|utmccn=(direct)|utmcmd=(none);
phpbb2mysql_data=a%3A2%3A%7Bs%3A11%3A%22 autologinid %22%3Bs%3A32%3A%22a152e841783914146e4bcd4f39100686%22%3Bs%3A6%3A%22 userid%22%3Bs%3A5%3A%2227840%22%3B%7D; user_registered=Cerberus%99; __utmc=85290701;

…

Apache/2.2.9 (Debian) DAV/2 SVN/1.5.1 PHP/5.2.6-1+lenny3 with Suhosin-Patch mod_python/3.3.1 Python/2.5.2 mod_ruby/1.2.6 Ruby/1.8.7(2008-08-11) mod_ssl/2.2.9 OpenSSL/0.9.8g Server at english-team.com Port 80

29

Dear Cerberus,

I have blocked the URL of this user with the following trick: Please help, stuck on SAT!

Many thanks
Slava

30

Oh that is smart! At first I couldn’t see what you did on the post because my browser automatically adds hyperlinks to texts such as this, but I eventually found out.
So I understand that this type of user/spammer is not to be blocked?

31

[Update: the error I posted was due to a Greasemonkey script that set all cookies to perpetual; I disabled it, and now all works as before.]

32

Hello Cerberus,
This is not a spammer. His posts are relevant to ESL und we can protected our forum only through this phpBB-code trick.
We don’t want to delete all his posts.

33

YES, you are complete correct. Our forum works only with activated cookies in your browser.

A small script performs a big trouble :slight_smile:

34

Hello Slava,
CraigWhite is a spammer account and should be deleted with his posts.

english-test.net/forum/searc … CraigWhite

Thanks

35

Hello Nzuahp,
Many thanks for your suggestion.
Slava

36

Hi,
These posts are spams, you may find the spammer there too.

english-test.net/forum/ftopi … in_nigeria
english-test.net/forum/ftopi … in_nigeria
english-test.net/forum/ftopi … in_nigeria
english-test.net/forum/ftopi … in_nigeria

Mixmixi

37

Thank you for reporting! These two users have been deleted.

38

You are very welcome my friend.

Mixmixi