talkmagic.co.uk

Has anyone else noticed that many threads have been locked ?
I wonder if it has anything to do with the links that came up for poker ?

Well spotted! Certain areas were targeted with Poker site adverts - an automated process of some kind - and the only way I cold stop them from flooding TM was to lock the two areas affected. Sorry about this but I spent almost 3/4 of an hour just deleting them - they were coming in at more than one a minute at one time. I'm in touch with the forum owner right now and he's checking to see how it could have happen plus how to stop it in future. As soon as it's sorted, we can unlock the topics.

glad you told me i thought i was having another reality leak again.

I had a same problem few months ago where bots were registering to my forum each day as a new user and post messages....but luckily being a web developer I just added the Turing test(Human test) on the registration form so the bots couldn't register and couldn't post messages...hope this helps..oh..and you *should* update your phpBB to the recent version...2.0.11 can be hacked during breakfast ...

Hope this helps a bit....

Thanks - we'll pass that on to the forum owner!

You're welcome..if you'll need any help here's a magician with years and years of experience in web developing(PHP most of it) so just let me know....

point wrote:You're welcome..if you'll need any help here's a magician with years and years of experience in web developing(PHP most of it) so just let me know....

Rest easy... but thanks.

The forum owner is a scripter and PHP wizard, as are a few of the mod team (I've been web programming since '89 ) and although we KNOW the bulletin board code is out of date, there ARE reasons why it's not being modified.

Mainly, because our host has re-written a good chunk of the code to facilitate better handling by search engines. He's a busy man!

As with all programming, its' usually better if the person who STARTS a projects sees it through, so it's just a matter of time. But he is certainly on the case.

Thanks for the kind offer though!

ok...ok....I know when I'm not wanted ....just joking ofcourse

Hi Point

Thank you very much for your suggestion, I appreciate it.
Unfortunately, these spammers are somehow posting without actually registering which doesn't sound like the same problem that you suffered.

I haven't worked out exactly how yet but I will

Best regards
Laurence

Hm...are we talking about real people or "robots" spamers?

We suspect they were mainly 'bots' using a sneaky back door method of avoiding the usual requirements of registering etc but on other occasions, they were very real people who have subsequently been banned at IP level.

Now that is interesting....nevertheless I would put the Turing test on the registration page cause the spammers could have the script to automaticly fill in the details on the registration form with just one click...I don't think that they go manually thru the whole procedure of registration for every board they want to spam.....

There have been several attempts at spamming in recent months and the processes seem to be different each time. I'm a complete ignoramus on such technical matters but I know that the Forum Owner is doing stuff in the background to try and stop it. The recent one a minute session was the worst ever and he managed to find a way to prevent the way they were accessing TM. It makes you wonder why people start such things, the sites they were 'promoting' must be really desperate for attention - assuming they're genuine!

Then I still think that Turing test(Human test) would be a perfect idea when registering...you've seen the Turing test in action but you probably just don't know that it's called that...it is when you have a picture of 5 - 7 generated letters (and/or numbers) and you have to write that combination to one of the form fields...thus proving you're human...hope I made this clear

Oh, is that called the Turing test? Useful thing to know .

I always thought of the Turing test as being the one where you have to sit at one computer and either a person or another computer at the other, and the aim is to guess whether it's a person or a computer. (No programs have done it yet though...).

Something new every day!

Kati