Spam, it hurts

For past several days I've noticed huge amount of spam here. Now Unity Support section is littered with arabic-looking spam (by time you read this, issue may be resolved).

Anyway, my point is that UT should change antispam-mechanism used here. For captcha I think SolveMedia should be used - most spambot-like programs I analyzed have trouble with it. Additionally I'd suggest to make first few posts of new users (exact amount undisclosed so spambots couldn't be adjusted to spit out "human-like" posts the spit spam) being accepted by mod/admin before showing up.

Combination of both methods should help kill or at least reduce problem to few spam posts that slip by.

 

That is a topic since several months. You even find some official statements about it in this thread:
http://forum.unity3d.com/threads/191804-ALL-THE-SPAM-and-Thank-you-reporters!

 

Support forum..... wow it is bad

 

And don't respond to it. It isn't like they are going to read it.
Just report it and move on.

 

Thanks for bringing this to our attention... I cleaned up support, yet again. Other forums have occasionally been hit but for some reason it always seems to be the support forum that gets the spam. Normally its just one post per user, this time it was 10 posts per user... all that noise was generated by 3 fake accounts. I'll just check the rest of the forums to be sure I got it all.

Keep reporting it when you see it and have a nice day.

 

thanks for the speedy response. Don't know what we would do without you guys and girls.

 

Press the small triangle on the bottom-left to report spam.


Just do it once per person. If you see massive spamming by a person, just report one of their posts. It will get removed shortly after.

 

Can I get a source on that? Doesn't look like you're a mod.

On a related note, sometimes I will report posts that are up to an hour old, where it seems unlikely that I am the first one to report. What happens to multiple reports on the same post? What about posts that already got deleted, does the Mod still have to go through all of them to check if he missed one or do they disappear from his list automatically?

 

I dunno, I've been doing that for some time now as what was requested:



http://forum.unity3d.com/threads/19...osts-before-allowing-starting-of-topics/page2

 

When you click the report button, it just sends an email with the topic link to all mods. If I've been away from the forum for a while (say 8+ hours), I delete the email reports without looking at them since there's a 99% chance another mod will have deleted the spam by then anyway.

--Eric

 

I didn't see the spam in question but I assume it is phishers. With that in mind some forums require 50 posts before a user can post links.

It might be time to think about captchas for all posts, many sites now requite a captcha anytime you must press the submit button.

 

That would be really incredibly annoying and won't do much to solve the problem, since the spam is generally posted by people, not bots. Anyway, this was already discussed; an effective solution is just to auto-moderate all posts from new users until they have a few approved posts. Unfortunately that can't really be done with the current forum software, since moderated posts in existing topics are basically hidden with no good indication to moderators that they exist.

--Eric

 

Ah, thanks for the info, both eskimojoe and Eric5h5!

 

How difficult would it be to simply force moderation of posts using non-english characters?

 

Yeah, I've noticed some spam, and you have to call it that not trolling, because it's new threads without even any links, that essentially leaves you wondering if the poster needs some type of help and not the kind of help you'd get in Unity forums.

 

Impossible with this forum software.

--Eric

 

Also, completely ineffective against anyone who isn't selling refridgerators from the middle east.

 

Well, given that something like 50% of the spam currently is refrigerators in the middle east, it wouldn't be a bad idea if it was possible.

--Eric

 

Man, 50% doesn't even cut it. Think he deserves a custom forum badge if people are thinking about solutions just against him

If only he'd stick to a single account :-x

 

For the next webmaster Unity hires, they should do a simple PHP coding test - write a VBulletin hook, such the post thread or post topic event and filter for spammy messages where lexical filters (such as arabic fridges, movie names) would get flagged as spam.


I have strong reasons to believe 90% of the respondents will fail this simple test. The only ones who would pass this test are expert PHP developers .

 

If mods simply administered a user's first post then this would be resolved.

Nothing has been done since the first thread that was made months ago.

 

I fixed that for you. (There's a ton of stuff happening behind the scenes to help us migrate from vBulletin.)

 

So wait, does that mean we are getting a new forum system.... or am I just misinterpreting as usual? Haha

 

We're hoping to get rid of vBulletin, and replace it with something more modular that allows us to solve these spam problems, and customise the forum the way we want.

 

Oh dear lord, I love it...... Can't wait, looking forward to it.

Approved, idea or just in the workings? If in the works, is there any ETA?

 

We don't an ETA, we have other systems tied to forum accounts so it's not just a VB simple migration.

But I really want it now, we could fix all the things without the codes!! Buuut we have to wait, I'll be sure to let everyone know when we have tonnes of progress on it though so it's won't come as a massive surprise.

 

Here's an idea -


- Make a version of Unity run-time that works on-server, without GUI and use Playmaker to script the forum...

 

To pk_Holzbaum... ah, didn't see this one In my defense (which is more just a lame excuse ), the forums that I mod'd didn't have a working search function

To Aurore... on average, how many new user posts per day? I was the only s.mod, and I had no problem keeping up with the mod'd posts since it all appears in one folder. Granted... those forums weren't nearly as big as these with not nearly as many new members, but... this site has more mods, so... I'm wondering if it balances out

Edit: Just checked the vB manual... if you use the idea that I suggested (have 2 usergroups [initial, and confirmed]), then... what if you set human verification on user's posts who are in the "initial" usergroup, as well as have them moderated? Essentially... if you make it too annoying for spammers... so that they have to do a ton of human verification stuff... they eventually give up

 

These are great ideas and again they are things we have already looked into. We are not running on vanilla VB, it's very customised so the majority of changes (this includes usergroups and human verification) need to be done by the web developers. Since we are working on moving away from VB they are reluctant to make any changes (other than security fixes of course). Believe me when I say I understand everyone's frustration with the spam, it sucks and what sucks even more is that I can't do anything about it right now other than "Delete post as spam and ban user".

 

Well... I don't find it annoying... in all honesty, I don't even use these forums. I'm just here because a friend of mine does, and he told me about the spam problem, so... all I'm saying is... it'll take a lot of time and work to change to a different system, but... if vB can be adapted to work... shouldn't that be tried first? If you think that one of these ideas could work, why not ask the devs to give it a try?

 

I... why... I don't even...

Please, let administrators administrate. Let actual users of the system get on with using the system. Users holding long conversations about spam is just a lot of additional noise; they often assume the administrators haven't cared or haven't tried various approaches, when in fact they have spent far more time thinking about the consequences of each approach far more than the users. Not to put too fine a point on it, with all due respect, non-users holding long conversations about spam is nearly indistinguishable from spam itself.

 

->

 

just..add..1..line..

use php or javascript to stop arabic characters on post title, similar to this:
http://stackoverflow.com/questions/16848666/prevent-chinese-character-input-using-jquery

 

The arabic spam is now getting way more than an annoyance. I've lost count of the times I've come on here to see a poster with a zero posts count spamming every sub forum and making it way too annoying to bother reading the forum. To happen once is bad luck, twice is annoying, three times and come on FFS Unity do something to fix it! How hard can it be to fix? I don't see this on other forums to the extent it's on here.

 

They are doing something about it; specifically they're changing the forum software so it will apparently be easier to stop that sort of thing (not sure when though).

--Eric

 

The rules don't say anything about English. We do ban the Arabic spammer repeatedly and all posts are automatically deleted when doing so, but it's not a bot, it's likely a (sad) human who is paid by another (degenerate) human to mindlessly spam the forums, so it keeps making new accounts.

--Eric

 

Well, it looks like our beloved spammer has trashed the support forum again
I really hope the planned forum changes fix the problem.

 

Showcase got hit, too.

 

But it's been going on for absolutely ages! Changing the whole sites software is like using a sledgehammer to crack a nut. They "unity" could fix this with a few lines of code and probably less than a day. But no, the want to drag it out and leave us with a long drawn out S***ty experience.

 

That's not the only reason for changing the forum software.

--Eric

 

Actually, as long as we're talking about spam, I have a request: if you see spam, just use the "report post" button. Don't post replies of any kind to it. Doing so bumps their topic up and gives them more visibility, which is exactly what they want. And you don't want to give spammers what they want, do you? No, I didn't think so! The spammers don't read replies and don't care if you don't like their spam, so there's no use telling them to shove off. It's better if you just sit there and fume silently. If it helps, you can click the "report post" button extra-hard to show your disgust. Thanks!

--Eric

 

Well replying to the post and marking it as reported makes everyone's lives easier.

a.) It stops law-abiding community members from taking the time to report the post, if it has been reported already
b.) It makes the mods lives easier so they only get one report, instead of loads of duplicate reports.

But ok, no more replying then.

 

Multiple reports aren't really a problem; no need to worry about that. I mean, if there were hundreds of people reporting the same post that would be pretty annoying, yeah, but that doesn't happen.

--Eric

 

First three pages of support are all spam by our infamous fridge salesman out of the Middle East. If you could just find a way to block that one guy. Maybe someone should start making hundreds of collect phone calls to the numbers he lists. say they are from "Mr. Stop Spamming Unity Or We Will Keep Making Collect Calls Until You Do!"

Can one even make international collect calls?

 

HOLY COW, you are not kidding!! I went to the Support forum and it is true the first 3 pages are almost ALL SPAMS, from ONE GUY !! (And almost daily, or even HOURLY !)

This guy has gone way beyond his "duty" and I think he may be getting some kind of sadistic sexual pleasure from spamming the Unity forum or something.

 

And 3 new spam posts in the last 8 minutes.

Wonders if there is a game here - "Attack Of The Refrigerator Men" . Perhaps you play as PC Eric defending your sanity with only the "Sword Of Deletion" against the advancing hordes of refrigerator salesmen.

cheers, gryff

 

he probably doesn't even sell fridges, he just wants your phone number/IP/identity and thinks all game developers are rich and is determined to take someones credit details or maybe its some kind of challenge?(since game devs would know code like he would). i mean come on, fridges on the internet? I mean that a cliche prank call. we could at least prevent users from posting new threads within a certain time limit, and avoid bumping after 24 hours.

 

Yeah that kind of freaked me out, seeing all of that weird arabic spam. I just wonder what kind of low life gets a kick out of spamming a forum. And I think this forums software is pretty solid ,but it could use a lot of work to make it better.