Why so much spam?

I've been coming onto the forum in the middle of the night and finding HUGE numbers of spam posts. The spammer is advertising stuff that no one on this forum would want, like dresses, women's shoes and wedding stuff, etc. The nature of the spam makes me think that it must be someone who is angry at Open Cart or people in the forum.

If it's possible, the spammer could be stopped by limiting new members to, say, 5 posts a day. That's enough for a new member to post a question about a problem he's having, plus a few follow-up posts. I think you should consider it.

I think the spam prevention system isn't working? This just started happening.

The thing that is curious to me is that the spam makes no sense. Dresses, boots, sunglasses, wigs, boots, etc. It's all the kind of stuff that no one on this forum would want. We are mostly guys here, and the stuff being advertised is women's stuff. It must be someone who is angry at Open Cart.

Well, Daniel may need sunglasses to look out the windows of his new office ...

The spam system only worked when first posts needed to be approved.

Now the On Click ban is gone we need to delete every single post...., no thanks.

one click ban is not gone. need to update captcha

Daniel wrote:one click ban is not gone. need to update captcha

OK, thanks Daniel.

See that you deleted the ghost topics.

just changed the capcha to a Q&A

don't seem like effective enough. Someone just spam again.

by referrerirola
Sat Jul 28, 2012 9:33 pm

would be great to make those that post too much within a certain time verify using captcha

This is an issue that everybody faces when using phpBB for their forums. I have had other sites in the past that I managed and used phpBB and we always ended up getting spammed by one dirtbag or another. I spent countless hours tracking IP addresses and their host bases and then manually entering their data into the banning system. Needless to say, after a couple of months where I spent more time tracking and killing, I dropped the use of phpBB and moved to another system.

There are spammers who know their way around the phpBB system and use this knowledge to just bombard forums with useless information. I would be willing to bet that these people are actually somehow involved with the design of phpBB from the "former employee" ranks or a very "unhappy developer" of skins and other areas of the phpBB core.

Problem is, there is a way around every system anyway, it is just finding the right one that has the least amount of issues. Not an easy task in today's world of bored, lazy, techno geeks who have nothing better to do than sit around the house in their underwear, living off the social support system, hacking everything under the sun, just to say they are a techie. To me, they are nothing but morons and common criminals, nothing more.

Even if Daniel was to be able to find another, more secure forum platform, the likelihood of having access to the current base of knowledge and help that there is right now may not be able to be imported which would be a serious loss to the OpenCart community.

Would sure be nice if you could just click on a button that says: "Click Here to Nuke" and the spam posters would be electronically obliterated from further existence.

It's spamming all over the threads! Looks scary...

I think you guys need to go back to approving new registrants, at least for a while.

The person who's doing this has got to be someone who is mad at OpenCart. Spamming a board frequented mostly by male techies makes no sense given the women's products they are selling.

Here is the domain information for http://www.kisspaulsmith.com. The registrar appears to be in China. At first, the hosting company -- http://www.cnmsn.net -- appeared to be legitimate, but they don't have a site.

I just sent an email to kisspaulsmith@163.com, it bounced.

Domain name: kisspaulsmith.com

Registrant Contact:
caoran
ran cao kisspaulsmith@163.com
13823893484 fax: 057123893484
haiding
jiading beijing 23893484
cn

Administrative Contact:
ran cao kisspaulsmith@163.com
13823893484 fax: 057123893484
haiding
jiading beijing 23893484
cn

Technical Contact:
ran cao kisspaulsmith@163.com
13823893484 fax: 057123893484
haiding
jiading beijing 23893484
cn

Billing Contact:
ran cao kisspaulsmith@163.com
13823893484 fax: 057123893484
haiding
jiading beijing 23893484
cn

DNS:
ns7.cnmsn.net
ns8.cnmsn.net

Created: 2012-02-18
Expires: 2013-02-18

Spam is still going on in this forum.

And there's someone spamming the extension's store comment this time round..

changed it to 60.

need to set it so people can not just create new topics.

Maybe this helps you with removing their post quickly: http://www.phpbb.com/customise/db/mod/anti_spam_acp
And I think this will stop the bots since I doubt they can click and drag with a brain http://www.phpbb.com/customise/db/mod/s ... ha_plugin/

already have one of them installed.

actually i think there are some human spammers involved. they are completing the captcha's then let some browser based spambot loose.

so far i have used the areyouhuman captcha and now using Q&A.

Daniel,

I have posted a new thread for our newly developed Arredo OpenCart Theme under Commercial Contributions/Themes and someone seems to have deleted it. I think when you were deleting the spam posts maybe accidentally deleted mine as well.

Thanks

not me.

Daniel wrote:already have one of them installed.

actually i think there are some human spammers involved. they are completing the captcha's then let some browser based spambot loose.

so far i have used the areyouhuman captcha and now using Q&A.

Q&A won't work for spam bots unless you keep changing it. The time of 60s would be great. Let's stick with it first

@Daniel

You need something better. The time deterrence don't look like it works.