Lots of spam accounts and posts…

[Lazvon]

Deleted the eight TEMU spam messages and banned the user.

I really think we need to upgrade to: 2.1.6 which was released in June 2025, if anyone knows how to request someone to this, would be appreciated!

[Elrich Maltah]

Thanks for your efforts to keep these forums spam-free.

One other method that could be used to keep out unwanted accounts is to ask a series of questions to potential users before they're allowed to join the forums. It's been long enough since I joined here that I don't remember if that is already being done, though.

[Lazvon]

Whew! 47 spam removals. We (well, I) lucked out that they were all in a single Forum category and was easy to just select all -> REMOVE TOPIC... otherwise that was gonna be a painful find and click each message and REMOVE.

[nash]

You can't just delete all posts by a single user?

[Lazvon]

Yet another flood of spam. Anyone know how to get someone at ICE to upgrade the forum software?

[Lazvon]

You can't just delete all posts by a single user?

Oh how I wish!!!

[Lazvon]

Holy crap.

I haven't been getting spam reports for past couple days. Finally got one and came to find the THOUSANDS of spam messages.

I am not sure what to do. Will try and clean up best I can. Wish the forum software had a "remove all posts from this user" user action.

[Lazvon]

Okay, that's a chunk of my life I won't get back.

Removed 51 pages of spam from the news/announcement directory briefing forum.

Guess their script was just hitting form 0 or one fortunately .

Has another spammer that did one post in every forum... I think I got all of those. Just report if you find one.

Painful! We need to moderate new user setups and email them and have them tell us how they found ICE/Rolemaster/HARP...

[jdale]

Does this work? Found it in some SMF documentation:

In order to delete multiple posts at the same time, you first need to enable checkboxes for quick moderation. Go to Profile > Modify Profile > Look and Layout. To the right of Show quick-moderation as, you will see a drop-down box. Select the checkboxes option here.

Now, go to the posts to be deleted and check the box in the upper-right hand corner of each post that you wish to delete. Then scroll down to the bottom of the topic and click on the button Delete Selected.

[Hansuke]

What about putting all new members on moderation until they submit a post? You could then un-moderate them if the submitted post was on topic.

[Lazvon]

JDale: that is what I did... there 50+ page still took a while.

Hansuke: yea, checked with one of the Admins (who also upgraded us, which hasn't seemed to help, but glad we are latest since it was security vulnerability)... he cannot find anywhere to force new user moderation (creation or posting).

General: I have banning large swaths of IP addresses as general these are all bits and they are operating off open systems, cloud systems, or other such things...

Funny thing, had to travel for work this week. Bratislava, Slovakia and Dublin, Ireland. Hahaha. Land in Bratislava and join local mobile network, see a moderation report... click it... "YOUR IP IS BANNED!"

Oh the irony.

Evidently the forum software also sets a cookie that you have been banned. So I got really worried when I was "still" coming from banned IPs at the hotel network, office network... then I thought maybe somehow all of Slovakia got banned (national firewall like China or something)... since I was still banned in Ireland and yesterday here at home, finally realized it was a cookie.

I will try and clean up what I missed this week.

I did see something I haven't seen before with Posts awaiting moderation. So perhaps an admin added a spam checker or something. I thought maybe it New Users, but first set of moderation needed was from a user who lost their password/email and had posted years ago. So, that's new.

[Lazvon]

Okay. Clean again. For maybe today?

Yes, definitely want New Users Moderation in the form you cannot do ANYTHING as a New User until moderated. That would require a really complex bot attack that can wait for my approval either through retries or checking an Inbox... or mechanical Turk still things which I can't make there is any significant money in this spam to pay for that. Surely this is just click through monetization and hopes someone acidic the links...

If we can't do that, then I would like to have their posts in a moderation queue that I can just quickly check a couple (assuming a title not promising $100,000.77) and Remove and Ban name/email all with one click. That would be awesome.