Reporting spambots.

[archibald]

asdse7h9aeG1 - C&P

[archibald]

Lucille521 - hidden links in posts

[archibald]

April87st - more hidden links.

Is it just me, or are they becoming more common?

[AnonymousCoward]

It's like graffiti. If you don take action and clean it up in time it will attract more vandals.

This problem is getting out of hand IMO. I suggest to use some throttling mechanism for new users. Give new users a limit of 1 or 2 posts an hour with a maximum of 6 to 8 a day until they are verified.

[archibald]

Smer6oU8 - embedded links

I'm guessing that not letting them post for the first 10 minutes would work - revoking the membership of any that try (after a warning).

[archibald]

Rick87Ju - more C&P fun

[archibald]

Tony54465 - embedded links

[bridgman]

Other than 89c51 (whoops, and mjg59) there might be a useful pattern here -- most of the spambots seem to have 2 or more numbers in the username (presumably randomly generated to avoid collisions with existing users ?) while real users do not. Wondering if there's an easy filtering option here to flag new users with spambot-like names for a bit of oversight on the first few posts ?

[archibald]

w55rQMat - C&P

I'm guessing a human check is out purely on the grounds that it increases the maintenance burden.

[Smask]

packM65W - C&P