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Spam users removed
Posted: Fri May 19, 2006 3:55 pm
by Ruud
I have removed all forum users, which were added for the sole purpose of promoting a website.
If I accidentally removed your profile in this cleanp operation, I'm sorry. Please register again if you want to.
Ruud.
Posted: Wed May 24, 2006 1:07 pm
by Ruud
Since they keep adding automated users. New users now require visual confirmation to register.
Sorry to make it difficult for honest people, but this protection is now needed.
Good work, Ruud!
Posted: Wed May 24, 2006 3:11 pm
by David Bryant
Those "spam" users are quite a nuisance, aren't they?
I'm acting as the administrator over on the DailySudoku.co.uk web site, and I've had a lot of trouble keeping up with those guys. Just FYI, last week we got hit by 96 new "users" in less than an hour. I was monitoring web traffic when it happened, and I was surprised to see that the site was being visited by the google bot (and a bit later, by the msn bot) at exactly the same time as the new "users" were registering!
So thanks for keeping the site cleaned up, Ruud. I appreciate how big a job it is.
BTW, do you have any idea how the spammers are able to track the google bot as it crawls the web? dcb
Posted: Wed May 24, 2006 4:46 pm
by Ruud
Hi David,
I think they are not tracking these bots, but they are camouflaged as robots.
Most site statistics packages filter these robot visits from the itemized data, so you will not be see any unusual activity on their IP's.
Anyway, I suspect them to use proxies to cloak their actual IP's.
I'm just not sure what they gain by adding users to a forum.
Ruud.
They want to influence google.com
Posted: Thu May 25, 2006 1:46 am
by David Bryant
Ruud wrote:I'm just not sure what they gain by adding users to a forum.
I'm pretty sure all they want to do is post a web-site address. They know (or they think they know) that Google sets preferences based on the number of links to a web site. So they just want their site to get a higher priority in a page of Google's results.
For instance, I noticed that there were only two different sites "advertised" by the 96 new "users" that showed up on dailysudoku.co.uk last week.
Ruud wrote:Anyway, I suspect them to use proxies to cloak their actual IP's.
You're right about that. Last week I noticed a 'bot of some kind trying to log into the other board -- it made about 50 - 100 login attempts per minute. I ran a back trace on the IP address, and could only track it as far as alexa.com. I wrote the guys at alexa.com to let them know someone is using their facilities this way, but so far no answer. dcb
