Forum Spammers

[BobCav]

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Hey folks. We had another spammer postingads on the forum today and thanks to some of you being on the ball,I was able to delete the threads.

If and when we do get a spammer, notify John, Mike, Longwatch and Me and whichever gets on here first will delete the thread. PLEASEdon't reply to them on the forum and espectially do NOT e-mail them! Today's spammer's IP resolved to NIGERIA. I can assure you, nobody in Nigeria is going to sell you top name HDTV's, electronics and cell phones, they are simply phishing for your e-mail address. Once you reply, they sell your address to other spammers and odds are you'll probably start getting those e-mails for the Nigerian 401 money scam.

Here's the IP of our first contestant!

Date Name IP Address IP Location
10 Mar 08 sales001 83.229.90.9 Nigeria
18 Mar 08melvin5 41.219.196.50 Lagos, Nigeria

 

[AbNo]

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Have you guys looked into getting CAPTCHA?

A now-dead board related to an old, OLD online service I used to use about 12 years ago doesn't use any kind of account verification (MAYBE email), and this is the result...

(Just text, but rather inappropriate text)

Possibly NSFW text
(no images, only spam)
[img=http://img89.imageshack.us/img89/6126/clipboard01ce8.th.png]

 

[Doug Huffman]

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Re CAPTCHA, as I understand, is to detect a human. Sales001 was I believe a human spammer.

 

[BobCav]

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Exactly what Doug said, it wasn't a spam-bot. I think that this software version doesn't directly support CAPTCHA, but perhaps it's coming soon. This has been a problem on many WoWBB forums.

 

[vermonter]

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Is this what we are doing now, posting IP addresses? If someone has a different opin from the moderators are you going to post their IP or remove their account?

 

[AbNo]

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*ignores blatant trolling*

BobCav wrote:

Exactly what Doug said, it wasn't a spam-bot.  I think that this software version doesn't directly support CAPTCHA, but perhaps it's coming soon.  This has been a problem on many WoWBB forums.

Well, didn't find anything on CAPTCHA for WoWBB, but I did find this.

http://www.livedatesearch.com/scammers_blacklist.html

Looks like most 83.229.* IP addresses are Nigera, Zimbabwe, and the like.

Lovely.

Does WowBB support prohibition of posting links before X number of posts?

 

[BobCav]

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Another SPAMMER today: melvin5. IP 41.219.196.50

These bogus e-mails promising purchases of hi-end items at discount prices is just another way of harvesting your e-mail addresses because they can't legally purchase e-mail lists for their illegal activities!

http://www.scamorama.com/

 

[squarepeg]

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I understand what a spammer is,I think I understand a phisher scam too. While yes you have the IP address, and you might be able to use it to block the user, what good is posting the IP in the public domain? What am I or maybe a more technically advanced user going to do with an IP address. I am not saying it is right or wrong to post the IP, just what does it do for us? Pardon my lack or knowledge on the internet stuff.

 

[Doug Huffman]

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To start with, a 'traceroute' to learn the upstream provider to whom to complain about the abuse of their Terms of Service. If that provider is not responsive then the next upstream. If nothing like that works then there are a number of 'blackhole lists' that can redirect the spammers IP to dev.null.

 

[BobCav]

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squarepeg wrote:

I understand what a spammer is,I think I understand a phisher scam too. While yes you have the IP address, and you might be able to use it to block the user, what good is posting the IP in the public domain? What am I or maybe a more technically advanced user going to do with an IP address. I am not saying it is right or wrong to post the IP, just what does it do for us? Pardon my lack or knowledge on the internet stuff.

No problem at all! Well, the fact that we can recognize and eliminate this kind of scamshouldput you at ease that those of us that are internet savvy are watching out for the members of the forum.

As to blocking IP's, only John can do that and they way these guys change IP's, he would be at it all day. Posting their IP's does nothing for you, but itputs these foolson notice that we're wise to their crap.

 

[AbNo]

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And honestly, it's no different than making a post that says "Hey guys, I'm getting pranked called by this phone number. xxx-yyy-zzzz".

 

[rabbit994]

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IP Address aren't extremely identifying. Some people IP don't change and others constantly change. It's even less then telephone number.

 

[John Pierce]

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squarepeg wrote:

I understand what a spammer is,I think I understand a phisher scam too. While yes you have the IP address, and you might be able to use it to block the user, what good is posting the IP in the public domain? What am I or maybe a more technically advanced user going to do with an IP address. I am not saying it is right or wrong to post the IP, just what does it do for us? Pardon my lack or knowledge on the internet stuff.

Well ... the most obvious use is that I (the forum administrator) can ban that IP range from signing up new accounts.

 

[AbNo]

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Does anyone else find the irony of the above post more than stunning?

 

[deepdiver]

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We had at least 2 spammers just yesterday from www. drugtreatments.com and have had several others over the last few months.

 

[PT111]

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It gets quite technical but IP addresses no longer mean a great deal for the average user even if you know it. If you have an IP address you can usually tell if the sender is from the US or a foreign country but not always. With todays use of NAT, PAT and relays IP addresses change constantly and unless you are tracing a server such as an email server you can't depend on it.

Right now I am using two different spam detection boxes for the school and about 10 different detection routines. On average I block 94% of all mail sent here. That 94% never even reaches the mail server. Another 2% gets flagged as possible spam and another 2% is usually jokes or similar. Only about 1% of all email received by the college is actual useful email related to our services.

 

[asells45]

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need help for a ocp call me 586 610 8613 asells45

 

[KBCraig]

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AbNo wrote:

Does anyone else find the irony of the above post more than stunning?

And there's another one further on, from asells. Two spam posts in a thread about spammers!

 

[Doug Huffman]

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Thumbing their noses.

In considering the lease of a MyWowBB I saw no mention of low level spam prophylaxis. Then such shouldn't likely be available to the casual browser.

 

[Pointman]

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Part of the problem is that some ads on news sites (especially MSNBC) are either bad from the start or hijacked. The JAVA ad is crafted to place information on the clipboard, and a Paste command will place it unintentionally. The rogue information isn't overwritten in subsequent cut/copy/paste operations, and a machine restart is needed (at minimum). Users have started reporting this scheme on a more frequent basis over the last few weeks.

It seems to have stemmed from Microsoft's use of this exploit on Hotmail images so they could open a new Microsoft specific ad window, and hackers discovered and corrupted the method for their own use.