Please, help, I am a newbie here

datingservices2 · Post by **datingservices2** » Sun Aug 13, 2006 1:07 am

I am a noob on this forum, please tell me how do I type in color text

Sir Nigel · Post by **Sir Nigel** » Sun Aug 13, 2006 5:54 am

Use the drop down menu option that says "Font Colour".

Post by **pcs** » Sun Aug 13, 2006 11:27 am

From the UserId it seems like this might be a potential forum spammer

I've never seen a spammer ask about how to change font colour, though

Post by **pcs** » Sun Aug 13, 2006 11:30 am

It was a spammer. URL to their dirty site in the tagline and fuckshemale as email domain .

Than a ridiculous question that they hope won't be deleted. What they want is search engine ratings via referrals.

Anyway, I've blocked their IP and deleted the tag. F***ers.

Sir Nigel · Post by **Sir Nigel** » Sun Aug 13, 2006 6:53 pm

Speaking of spam, is there a way you could block email addresses from appearing?

At another php board I visit even logged in users can't see others' email addresses and have to send them a PM type message to their email account. Just a though and is photo verification turned on?

Post by **pcs** » Sun Aug 13, 2006 7:08 pm

Image verification is turned on. They are doing it manually by hand. Some people have time.

Not sure how to hide emails for everyone, but you can set this in your profile
so that your email is not shown.
For example, my email is hidden.

You may see emails because you are an administrator.

Sir Nigel · Post by **Sir Nigel** » Wed Aug 16, 2006 5:03 am

Perhaps email address display could be disabled for people not logged in? That's an easy way to prevent spam as I noticed this site isn't set up with way.

Post by **pcs** » Tue Aug 22, 2006 10:46 am

Well, the posts to the forum are made to create links to their site
and search engines give a site with many links to it a better rating.

Besides, some forum members might be tempted into visiting the site.

Regarding email, I'll try to login from another PC in a guest mode to see
what's up with emails.

Marko

Post by **pcs** » Mon Sep 04, 2006 7:01 pm

Ok, emails do not show any more.

I've added another anti-spam counter-measure script, it does eliminate more of them
so we're down to maybe 2-3 a week. Up to 5 attempts per day are blocked (I get an
email notification every time). More are deterred by captcha (visual confirmation).

Fighting spam is an on-going war, much of the phpBB support forum is about this topic.

Basically, whenever admins/developers come up with a new approach, spammers eventually
catch-up and break the protection. Even the visual confirmation was broken already and
supposedly software exists that can break it.

I could install a better captcha (visual confirmation) at this point, but its hard to read even
for humans and it will be broken eventually anyway.

Not to mention those spammers who register "manually". I think they have software which does
the registration for them and only presents them the visual confirmation pic so they just type
that in and the program does the rest, automated, for a large number of sites one by one.

Sir Nigel · Post by **Sir Nigel** » Wed Sep 06, 2006 2:57 am

Usually visual confirmation is the way to go and seems like the last defence for automated spammers. As for the manual spammers, well they just have to get deleted a banned.

Post by **pcs** » Wed Sep 06, 2006 10:05 am

Banning often does very little. They use proxies or fake their IP.
Banning worked for NormB, though

(Edit: He used multiple IP's though, but I got all
of them eventually

)

It is more likely that some innocent visitor will some day find himself banned
for no reason, though the chance of that is very slim.

Forums on phpBB.com are an interesting read, if you're into this kind of thing.