Corey

iTrader: (1)

I am sure some of you may have seen the child pornography that was posted today by the perp below.
bembi@atvclub.msk.ru
http://www.ip-adress.com/ip_tracer/195.24.76.208

I want to apologize if any of you were at work, school, or with your family around the computer when this took place.
The membership should not have to put up with crap like this from this coward pornographer that posted today from the safety of his keyboard.

I did not see it as I was out in the field away from my work desk, but I was tipped off about it via text message, then the reported posts came rolling in.

Whoever this perp is he is one sick person.
The pictures that were posted could have gotten someone arrested at work or even at home if their PC was investigated since it is a crime to have child pornography on ones computer.

Thanks to all who reported it, but we have a favor to ask.
If reporting pornography like this that has pictures embedded in the thread, it might be best to not report it, but to let a moderator you see in the "Who's Online" list to tag and move the thread out of public view.
Then when one of us is not at work the thread can be looked at, but the perp would be banned from the info you give to staff.

Reason I state this is because the moderator who responded to the Reported Post had his screen filled with the pics from the perps thread since using the Report this post feature includes the first post in all its glory in the reported post feature.

He could have gotten into serious trouble.
I do not know yet if he was at work or at home still when I was contacted about it.

But back to the spam.
Yes, we are getting hit hard with spam.
I see this not only here but on many other forums as well.
I belong to a few Toyota forums and an expedition forum, and they all get hit hard too.
I often report the spam as I am up before the birds or worms in the morning, and I often see the spam as it is evening in the countries a lot where the spam originates from.

Spammers are getting desperate, and will go to any length to get their info to you.
We have three types of spammers here.

1. The autobot spammer
These ones that post stuff like Air Jordan shoes, cell phones, computers, you have seen them, the posts are a mile long and look like a carbon copy of all the other ones like that.
Some are automated, some may have an actual spammer behind the keyboard.
China, India, and Nigeria is where most of them originate from.

2. The smart spammers
These are live perps behind the keyboard, and will often interact with you in a thread giving praise with broken gibberish language as English is not their first language.
Words like:
That is neat, I like it so, thanks be to you for showing us that, ect.
So where is the spam?
In their sig line.
It takes you to a page to buy stuff with their user ID so they get credit if you buy a product from the website.
These often ship from out of the USA, mainly from China or India.

3. The tag team spammers
One spammer will sign up and ask a question on where to buy a product, as he heard it was really great to own.
No link in his sig most of the time.
A few days later another spammer signs up often from the same IP address or cubicles with an IP very close, and he will have the answer to the first spammers question and provide a link for all to see.
Both of these spammers have a total of one post each.
They are often from China, India, and Nigeria.

These spammers are best dealt with by using the Report this post feature.
They usually do not post pornography, so there is no danger in us opening up a reported post thread or the actual thread itself.

I do not think the spam is going to go away either, as many of these spammers depend on it for their revenue.
Maybe there will be some better tools down the road to tackle this spam.
I would like to have a big button to push that would fry their PCs.
The pornography ones, I would like to have the big button fry them.

92 TOY

Corey,
I saw the thread title and thought it was very likely something very bad so I would not even click on it, but then I was thinking how would I report it? So I just let it sit there, hoping a moderator would see it. I'm an ignoramous when it comes to omputers, but I knew that thread was something I wanted no trace of on my hard drive.

I apologize for not reporting it myself and I would hope that based on the thread title nobody would really purposely have clicked on it but that's their own business.

I guess I could have texted you as well.

xxxtreme22r

might think about adding recapcha or something like that one the boards. I generally know whats available for joomla since thats my main focus in web developing, so I am not too sure whats available for vBulletin. Been along time since i have messed with it. Another thing to possibly look into is something called bad behavior. I use that on 90% of my joomla stuff. Seems to work pretty good. http://www.bad-behavior.ioerror.us/ If you have control over the server, mod_security is a good thing to have too.

I would be willing to bet that that perp only found this website because it has the word "TOY" in it, which makes it even sicker.

Elton

theres been a few spam threads we need mods around more often lol

Corey

iTrader: (1)

92, probably a good thing you did not click it if you were at work.

xxx, we had the recapcha if that is the one that asks a question I think, or the one with a graphic you must type in the text you see on it.
I will have to look into the Bad Behavior one you linked here.
I will read up more on it this weekend.
We ran another antispam thing for awhile, but it did not do a very good job.

Elton, most of the spam comes in around the time I am typing this.
I am probably the only one up at this time either at home getting ready for work, or at work like I am now.

I am pretty sure too those girls at the porn sites are exploited kidnapped teens forced into the sex trade.
I saw a big thing on it on the History Channel a few weeks back.
And that was in the US!
Women from other countries come to the US after answering job classifieds, and when they get picked up at the airport, they are forced right away into prostitution and slavery.

A lot of this stuff goes on that most people do not know about.
The sites overseas that hosted the pictures that were shown here may even be run by the mob over there.

Another thing, I do not hate the regular spammers we get here if they are legit, but they have no place here as they are not invited into our house here.
They are only trying to make money.
They are more of a nuisance than anything as it causes staff to spend time eliminating them.
But if they are scammers, then they can get the same treatment as below

The ones who post the pornography, all I have is hatred for them and would like to drag them behind my hitch down a gravel road.
They do not care if you are at work when you open up their thread or if you have strict morals on not viewing that kind of content.

92 TOY

No I wasn't at work....can't surf at work, busy ER I work at.

Just for the heck of it I was clicking around the site to see if we had a CONTACT US button and I saw we did but it's kinda buried. I didn't report it yeaterday because I figured with all the members around, somebody would very likely KNOW what to do.But it kinda felt apathetic thinking someone else would do it.

In retrosepct, I probably coud have clicked on any thread and pressed the REPORT button just to get your attention.

Just a thought, but what I see with what spam I've come across is that it's their 1st post. Is there any way you could make it so that ANYONE's 1st post or thread be approved 1st by a mod??

4runner Freak

Sounds like a good idea, but it will require more work from the Mods.
I'm glad I didn't open or even see the thread.
There is more scum then ever that are coming out of the woodwork, lately.

Corey

iTrader: (1)

That is a lot of work.
We use to run a filter here that would scan the first five (you can set any number for it) posts of new users to do this very thing.
It would get spammers furious as they would look for their post and post again.
The software would not always flag their post, only if it was suspicious.

The only bad thing is it would catch legit members too by keywords.
I was very busy spending more than an hour a day morning when I got up, then when home from work approving/disproving posts.
It simply takes to much personal time, and did not give me much freedom to enjoy reading other threads.

DeathCougar

iTrader: (23)

Response time from post to deletion was under 10 minutes. I think my fellow mods are doing an excellent job

No one can catch everything all the time, which is why we rely on you members to help keep watch. Use the report post feature, or PM a mod. Some members even have our numbers and can contact us. Not much, if anything, ever gets by us.

xxxtreme22r

another way to block live spammers is to add their ip in .htaccess rather than through the software, they will be returned with a server not found, it will ban them from the entire site. not just the forum software.

there is some other stuff that is available out there which is really nasty to spammers too. but has the possibility of being borderline illegal. ie hack their own computer. No judge in their right mind would prosecute a server admin from doing so though since their main concern would be the spammer that was doing wrong to begin with.

Ive tried stuff like that on my development servers, it's pretty cool, you think your hacking someone else's computer when in reality your hacking you own lmao.

there is other software that prevents the use of port and folder scanners too which are used by both bots and live, I can't remember which ones are available at the moment though.

I'm in the process of bulletproofing mine as we speak. It's alot of work especially if your somewhat new to server admin as myself.

Corey

iTrader: (1)

A few years back I indeed to use to edit the .htaccess file with a text editor.
Was not Windows Text Editor, as it could screw up code when you saved it, but a very cool text app that would not add any crap back in like the one that comes with Windows.

I found most of the spammers though would just get a different IP.
We do have another toy on the forum that is a cool plugin that will let you enter an IP and you can do some fun stuff with it such as blocking them or redirect them to any URL you want.
I use to direct them to the cybercrime page at the FBI.
But that only works for awhile until they get a new IP or use software that can spoof it.

stormin94

Maybe the first new thread posting should be approved, rather than the first post. Some forums have something similar to that, such as: No signature line untill you have X amount of posts, No new thread posting untill you have X amount of posts, etc. I'm not sure if the system in use here could be somewhat easily programmed to utilize some kind of system similar to that, or not. In my opinion, a system like that would eliminate a very large percentage of spam, and would essentially not affect any of us at all, since we already have multiple posts.....

Ironmike4x4

Did you report it to the authorities? I sure hope so, these motofos need to be caught and spend the rest of their days in prison with Bubba using them as a pin cushion. Sorry you guys have to put up with stuff but great turn around with 10 minutes! I'll keep the reporting in mind if I ever catch anything like that in the future.

DeathCougar

iTrader: (23)

The spam comes from out of country.