when they've got a name like 'shoptrade97' they shouldn't even be allowed on in the first place :roll: ](*,)

yes, there's a new one

Yeah, he's the people of 2197's problem now.

Increasing the time delay between posts may help as well. By the sounds of things, these are automated bots that sign up and then run a script to spam all threads.

If necessary, there's another way to tell humans and computers apart - pose a question in the sign-up form for the forum where you need to actually go into the site to find the answer.

For example:

"What is FourFourTwo Australia's tagline?

Fill in the blank:

The _______ Football Website"

The better than TWGF Football Website?
The homoerotic Football Website?
The Ethnic vs Aussie Football Website?

That might work, depends on what has targeted the site. Some of those places have guys just sitting at computers all day in some third world country like laos or vietnam or new zealand who see the screenshot of the question/catchpa, tell the bot what the answer is and it spams it up.

The only real way to stop it is to prevent new user posting for a day or 2, and having admins checking out the account first.

:lol: :lol: :lol:

They are back. ffslin in AF

Where's my gun?

:cool:

At least it's not as frequent anymore...

haha81 - is not making me laugh...

Yet another invasion, and no mods.....time to make Joffa a mod I think.

man the barricades....circle the wagons....and where's my gun!

They don't give you a gun up front, you have to start with a feather duster. Once you master that you move onward and upward to the megaphone, then the capsicum spray, then the gun.

feather duster...pfft

Locked and Loaded ;)

But yeah, the invasion has started. we must band together, AND TAKE BACK WHAT IS OURS!!!!!

UNITE AND FIGHT!!!!!

UNCLE KEV WANTS YOU FOR FOURFOURTWO ARMY! SIGN UP TODAY

RALLY THE TROOPS, CLEAR THE WOMEN AND CHILDREN etc. etc.

Shit... I spoke too soon, didn't I? :(

has this sort of thing happened before, if so, how did you deal with it then?

On other non-football forums which I have modded and helped admin before, we used a CAPTCHA system, and the "questioning" system that I posted on the last page. We also had a system in place where you'd have to manually activate your account by having a valid email address and the time required between posts was limited to 60 seconds.

i agree with all of that except probably the 60 seconds rule

and another thing, why aren't you mods deleting all these spam bot posts rather than just editing them?

I was going to ask the same question. :p Also, why are their accounts still listed on the members page?

Edited by RedsUnited: 5/9/2010 11:41:57 AM

These things are destroying the forums, what sort of idiot actually thinks they are of value to their business?

Because if we delete their comments when they're the first comment on the article, the thread for that article can't come back. They're still listed because they're banned, not deleted. If you look, mk is still listed as well.

i am quite suspiscios of 'deaslin', the current 'newest member' on the forums...

... and it looks like my suspiscions were correct :(

Yeah, for fuck's sake...

If KA is reading this, then read this:

http://www.phpbb.com/community/viewtopic.php?t=427852

If you're using phpBB of course... which I can't tell.

Edited by RedsUnited: 5/9/2010 09:32:41 PM

lock and load people....lock and load!

Edited by joffa: 5/9/2010 09:35:27 PM

Make it so new members can only post once they have posted more than 10 times - that'll stuff em. ;)

Seriously though, can you make No Spamming or Marketing a legal requirement/condition of membership that would give some legal avenue for billing them? Probably a waste of time given they can make up contact details and hotmail type accounts so easily - you'd never find the real person.

Would it be too difficult to set up provisional posting for new members (so all posts from newbies would sit somewhere for a couple of hours until released)? Would be annoying for genuine new members, but it would only have to be for a few posts to show their intentions.

They don't care. It'd be pretty much automated anyway.