New user posting limits?

[bionichamster]

As I'm typing this a user (I presume) by the name of ThomasJend is spamming the boards with links to probably dodgy websites, when I arrived this morning there were around 50 posts, last time I look they were into the 90's. I guess it'll keep posting until a Mod finishes their brekfast and visits the site or checks their e-mail.

It does suggest that the site is vulnerable to this sort of spam attack. Is there a way of limiting the number of posts by a new user until they have been vetted by a mod? This user joined two weeks ago but started his spam today as far as I can tell. If there was a limit of say 10 posts (or fewer) until you've been checked by a mod then the risk of being flooded by a spambot would be seriously cut down. All mods would have to do would be glance at the first few posts by any user at any point after they start posting and approve that user as 'real', otherwise delete them and their posts. In 99% of case it should be obvious if they are just a spam link generator.

BH

[bionichamster]

Wierd, his posts are down to 63..... where did the rest go?

[staffordian]

Wierd, his posts are down to 63..... where did the rest go?

Perhaps a mod is at work, but I'd have thought a nuclear option of a wholesale delete of the account would clear it all in one go, so a bit strange.

Staffordian

[redsturgeon]

Wierd, his posts are down to 63..... where did the rest go?

Perhaps a mod is at work, but I'd have thought a nuclear option of a wholesale delete of the account would clear it all in one go, so a bit strange.

Staffordian

That was me. I just decided to take down the ones on the boards I mod because they looked a bit untidy. Only admins can block the user and block delete so that will come when stooz or clariman wake up.

John

[bionichamster]

That was me. I just decided to take down the ones on the boards I mod because they looked a bit untidy. Only admins can block the user and block delete so that will come when stooz or clariman wake up

Thanks John

I think all of his posts have gone while I was walking the dog, I see stooz is logged in so he's probably nuked it.

BH

[melonfool]

That was me. I just decided to take down the ones on the boards I mod because they looked a bit untidy. Only admins can block the user and block delete so that will come when stooz or clariman wake up

Thanks John

I think all of his posts have gone while I was walking the dog, I see stooz is logged in so he's probably nuked it.

BH

That is a downside of us mod-ing different boards in little groups, John could only delete the spam on 'his' boards so even though it appears he was most on the ball (didn't have quite such a long lie-in...) he could only do the boards he is mod for anyway.

This does seem to have been our worst one yet. Stooz had put a limit up for having to make five posts before you could post a URL, but at one point that went wrong and none of us could post URLs, so I'm not sure how that ended up.

Mel

[mc2fool]

It does suggest that the site is vulnerable to this sort of spam attack. Is there a way of limiting the number of posts by a new user until they have been vetted by a mod? This user joined two weeks ago but started his spam today as far as I can tell. If there was a limit of say 10 posts (or fewer) until you've been checked by a mod then the risk of being flooded by a spambot would be seriously cut down. All mods would have to do would be glance at the first few posts by any user at any point after they start posting and approve that user as 'real', otherwise delete them and their posts. In 99% of case it should be obvious if they are just a spam link generator.

This does seem to be happening here more than it happened on TMF, I presume 'cos the TMF system was unique to TMF whereas phpBB is widely used and so there are off the shelf spambots for it, such as http://en.spambot.pl/phpbb.html.

Rather than a mechanism that involves moderator action, maybe a prove-you-are-human mechanism would be a better idea. E.g. a captcha on the first few post attempts or similar. On a quick google there seems to be quite a few articles, etc, about it (haven't looked into any myself). https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=phpbb+spambot+captcha