Messages

121

Users / Re: Posting Links -- I'm looking for a clarification.

« on: January 11, 2011, 06:24:36 pm »

Bots usually do SEO, so they need to post real links. Obfuscated links won't help their purpose, so they don't even bother with this. On our forum, you can post links after you have 4 posts. If links gets abused for spam purposes after the 4 post count, I can just install another mod which adds "nofollow" to links from users under a certain level of posts, breaking SEO tactics again.

If the link is useful though, I don't see any problem posting it.

122

Users / Re: *WARNING* IMPORTANT MESSAGE for all people using "free email" accounts.

« on: January 09, 2011, 08:12:55 pm »

New users won't be able to edit their profiles until they reach 4 posts. They'll be caught before reaching this number anyway.

123

Users / Re: *WARNING* IMPORTANT MESSAGE for all people using "free email" accounts.

« on: January 09, 2011, 06:49:31 pm »

Some spam prevention modules have been installed. In theory they should make life hard for the spammers, but should be OK for real people. I never used these before, so I have no idea if they'll behave themselves. If they misbehave, please drop me a line.

Is there a option to moderate (or captcha) the first 'x' e.g. 5 posts of new members on SMF ?

This will usually block spammers that break through the other new account systems.

Worth checking into.  Security and anti-spam requires a layered system.  As they get more clever, you adjust and change the layers.

I'm still trying to find modules that do this. I'm not doing any coding myself yet (no time to do it). Still hoping others did it already. There is a SMF addon that imposes post-count restrictions on links, like if you're under a certain number of posts, your links get either mangled (have to copy/paste them and reconstruct them manually) or get a nofollow attribute (so no page rank for you).

124

Users / Re: *WARNING* IMPORTANT MESSAGE for all people using "free email" accounts.

« on: January 09, 2011, 06:46:51 pm »

Some spam prevention modules have been installed. In theory they should make life hard for the spammers, but should be OK for real people. I never used these before, so I have no idea if they'll behave themselves. If they misbehave, please drop me a line.

Do you know which plugins exactly got installed? I have other forum that I co-admin so that I can take a look at them.

Thanks.

httpBL, Stop Spammer, from http://custom.simplemachines.org/

The services they use will probably give you some hints on similar modules for other forum platforms.

125

Users / Re: *WARNING* IMPORTANT MESSAGE for all people using "free email" accounts.

« on: January 09, 2011, 03:06:35 am »

Some spam prevention modules have been installed. In theory they should make life hard for the spammers, but should be OK for real people. I never used these before, so I have no idea if they'll behave themselves. If they misbehave, please drop me a line.

126

Users / Re: *WARNING* IMPORTANT MESSAGE for all people using "free email" accounts.

« on: January 08, 2011, 02:22:56 pm »

The "free email" ban will not be enacted. There was a very fiery discussion last night about it, and alternative measures will be devised instead.

127

Users / Re: very stupid question about weborbiter 2.0

« on: January 07, 2011, 09:49:46 pm »

The WebOrbiter 2.0 uses jQuery. You'll have to see what jQuery doesn't like about your phones. May not be too fun to debug and fix.

128

Users / Re: *WARNING* IMPORTANT MESSAGE for all people using "free email" accounts.

« on: January 07, 2011, 05:29:54 pm »

You make it yourself personal.
By not listening or discussing this, only deciding.
Take responsibilty for your decision.
Apparantly for a lot of people it is a problem, and it is your decision.....it is only logic.

Your logic is about as flawed as your "arguments". 

I just re-read the thread, and bongo's "flawed" logic stands, and so do his arguments: you did take a decision by yourself, you are ignoring all sane replies. I am effectively talking to myself, you can't deny that.

Yeah sorry for ignoring people that are obviously looking for a fight like yourself.

I'm not looking for a fight, but I'll fight if I have to. And as far as I can tell, I have to.

129

Users / Re: *WARNING* IMPORTANT MESSAGE for all people using "free email" accounts.

« on: January 07, 2011, 05:24:32 pm »

You make it yourself personal.
By not listening or discussing this, only deciding.
Take responsibilty for your decision.
Apparantly for a lot of people it is a problem, and it is your decision.....it is only logic.

Your logic is about as flawed as your "arguments". 

I just re-read the thread, and bongo's "flawed" logic stands, and so do his arguments: you did take a decision by yourself, you are ignoring all sane replies. I am effectively talking to myself, you can't deny that.

130

Users / Re: *WARNING* IMPORTANT MESSAGE for all people using "free email" accounts.

« on: January 07, 2011, 05:00:33 pm »

...
LinuxMCE's problem is ZAERC.
...

Getting personal now are we?  I wouldn't go there if I were you.

How about if you were me?

131

Users / Re: *WARNING* IMPORTANT MESSAGE for all people using "free email" accounts.

« on: January 07, 2011, 04:54:50 pm »

Another idea: have the new user fill in redundant info, like this: type in the data in the "Name", "Location", "email address" and the number XYZ as one string, with each component separated by a semicolon in a dedicated field.

132

Users / Re: *WARNING* IMPORTANT MESSAGE for all people using "free email" accounts.

« on: January 07, 2011, 04:17:41 pm »

This just came to mind: Use a MD5 sum of the user's info, and ask the user to provide certain components from it. Characters in certain positions, a range o characters from the string, possibly don't give the positions in progressive order, so characters don't necessarily follow one another in the string (e.g. characters 3, 5, 2).

Have someone throw you a real email account while they are at it.

I should tell you right now that I can't get a "real" email account each time you feel like it to "update" the definition of "real email account". If I get an email with BT and the spammers move there, what then? It's suddenly not "real" enough for you so here I am shopping for the next "real for now" email address?

You may as well delete this forum if you enact this policy, 'cause you'll lose most of the real posters.

133

Users / Re: *WARNING* IMPORTANT MESSAGE for all people using "free email" accounts.

« on: January 07, 2011, 04:10:51 pm »

So here goes: A week or two back I was looking for alternatives to CAPTCHA. Keep the CAPTCHA (makes the site look "legit" for the Indian CAPTCHA crackers), and add something that isn't yet standard. Options:

* An extra field that says "What is 2 + 2?" and the user just has to enter 4 in the field.
* An extra field that doesn't use a hardcoded human readable question or equation, but displays it with alternative letters and digits, eg. "What is 2 plus 2?", "What is two + two?", "What is 4 times five?", "What color is a red car?", "Enter the 4rd word of this sentence".

Still thinking on options. Banning the Internet because there are spammers on it isn't an option.

134

Users / Re: *WARNING* IMPORTANT MESSAGE for all people using "free email" accounts.

« on: January 07, 2011, 03:58:31 pm »

Dude. Stop for a second. I don't have a "mainstream" ISP. I use whatever others throw at me. What you are saying is that I should step away from this Internet thing because I don't have an alternative e-mail address than @gmail.com

I also checked my calendar to see if it's April Fools already, and it isn't.

If anything, we should change the signup procedure to make it harder for bots. I have some ideas if you want to hear them.

135

Developers / Re: Clutter Exercise: Media List

« on: November 24, 2010, 08:58:35 pm »

I assume I'll have to go to my LinuxMCE development box, which is in fact Thom's development and girl amazement box , 'cause I get "Gen_Devices/QtWebBrowserBase.h: No such file or directory". That is if the Device Template is in the latest database. If it's just on your system, then I can't do much to help you, unless you give me direct access to your system to see what's going on.