Time to make forums private?

[BotOperator]

warning first ban on some time, second time removing key and acc

Thats not possible.

 

[Frayman]

So hypothetically what would happen if we accidentally clicked one of these links? ..and what steps should one take incase we did? ..other than run a virus scan on your computer

 

[Gaaldornick]

If we verified accounts, then you wouldn't be able to return after the first time we banned you. I guess you can stay.

There are a number of anti-spam measures in place that prevent a majority of the spam coming through. For example, new users must pass a 2 part verification similar to captcha.
Here's an example:

New users now have to pass the same verification for I believe their first 5 posts.

The spam everyone has been seeing lately has not been the work of bots, but rather a human. You should have noticed a distinct decline in the amount of mass-spam Chinese threads such as those prevalent in the PokemonGo section since we turned on the post verification.

If someone is dead set on spamming, it is going to happen. I just cleaned up 20+ spam threads from 4 different accounts. However not one was a reported post. Whenever there's a reported post, all staff members get an email about it and it will eventually get taken care of.

I just recently mentioned to the rest of the staff how we need to further step up the anti-spam by turning on more features of Spam-O-Matic because the spam in the last week has been getting worse. We are also looking into other modules, but at the same time we are making sure that these forum modules would not cause a security risk to our users. There's also innocent people who get in the crossfire of auto-moderation, which is why we stopped using an auto-banner that we had used previously on the forum.

We keep the forums open because we have many active users that do not wish to create a forum account, but still would like to browse threads or download profiles.
Again, we are open to suggestions.

I lol'd and moved on

 

[UsernameInvalid]

As someone who regularly reports the spam posts that DO get through, I have to agree that there could be something done to better the end user functionality of the open forums.

I get that open forums means people can ask questions about the bot that will potentially increase your bottom line and I respect that.
I also get that out of the 2 million users 15 of them report spam posts when they show up, and although its moderators jobs to clean it up it isn't easy to do it 100% of the time perfectly or timely.

What could be done, is tie a user to their key(s) and create a report rating in the back end of the site. Even have it displayed as a badge of honor for helping moderate the forum.
If your report gets a post noticed then you increase in rep, and if you are above a certain rep you can soft-remove a post currently on the front page.
It could even be so that only the top 100 users get this perk.
If you soft-remove a valid thread your rating goes negative and you get an infraction in a similar way you ban users for forum rules being broken.

This would hold users accountable for over reporting and tie it to their key for lifetime tracking no matter how many times they try to come back to the forum.
Guest users wouldn't have access to it.
Guest users still have to go through verification for the first 5 posts.

The only issue I could see presented here is spammers buying keys and then blasting your report function for a day or two, but could be remedied with a minimum post (or thread creation) count that they would have a very hard time bypassing for the sake of trying to make one thread that has a link in it with a virus.

Even if you don't do any of the above, I appreciate all of the hard work you ARE doing and will continue to report the posts asap. Perhaps give me a report function on the main page so I can look at one posts creator and report all 5 by them without haveing to go to the thread.

 

[khurune]

People have brains, why would you click on a link from an obvious spam post... There is plenty of anti spam measures in place. If you're stupid enough to click a dodgy link from a spam post, then good chance you wouldn't of ended up in this forum in the first place.

 

[hackitbaby]

People have brains, why would you click on a link from an obvious spam post...

i loled hard - read some topics from time to time xD

 

[Sphero]

You know, i had to laugh really hard about the anti spam / bot prevention methods. We are in a "botter" forum and should know how to overcome such little obstacles, shouldnt we?
beside of that - the only way to stop spammers is indeed a "private" forum. This means - only registered can see the forums, only HB customers can post and a few other restrictions. VBulletin has many many options to stop spammers - use them The Vbulletin team also can be very helpful with this - at least they were a few years back when i still had my forum. great support there...

 

[n0ise]

Might want to go for something like Cloudflare
or own system with reCaptcha and Reverse Proxy for your Server.

 

[omny]

i just got the bot for this today, i wouldnt of gotten it if i didnt check out what profiles were available before hand

 

[skuzx]

easy solution: to be able to post on these forums you must prove you bought a key, eg, linking your honorbuddy key

 

[Raaz]

im not linking shit regarding my key. its mine not yours.

LOL this guy!