Want to help us out? (REWARD!)

I've been flagging things since I joined; don't think there needs to be a reward expected for pointing out the trash for the janitor to clean.

Isn't there a way of viewing all recently created threads by new members?

Not exactly, but you can see latest posts if you select main sections like Software Development, Web Development etc. Plus bonus Currently online and Top Members by Rank

Portgas D. Ace -- Is onto the job!

I agree, no need to receive rep points for flagging spam. As members enjoying the fruits of Daniweb, we should just see this as something we can give back to Daniweb, by helping the mods to know about the spam, flagging the posts.

Thanks everyone, your help is truly appreciated.

This Russian spam gang has been attacking for five days now, and it's only thanks to the hard work of the mods here that you haven't been confronted by a flood of truly disgusting filth.

a nice green blocky of +rep

I miss the green blockies...

I said this in A51 but it's worth mentioning again that I have yet to encounter any of this nefariousness, so yizzles are doing a kick-azz job with it. Anytime I've spotted anything on the activity points radar (and I check because I've been edged out by that Adatapost fellow, curses) the parties have already been banned.

>> I've been flagging things since I joined;

>>we can give back to Daniweb, by helping the mods to know about the spam, flagging the posts.

I know that a lot of regulars are already flagging spam and we really appreciate it. I was trying to motivate some new members to help us out with the current spam-crisis. The more people help, the faster we can ban the spammers and clean the posts.

Some of the banned users still seem to appear in the "Currently Online" and move up the activity points chart. Is it that they never logged off?

The banned users seem to be staying logged in (probably do not delete cookies between sessions) and the activity points are for modifying signatures and profiles. They cannot, however, post anything.

All these spammers are being banned under our keep it legal rules rather than spam ones (child porn, rape videos, drug sales etc) so are banned for a full six months.

Portgas D. Ace -- Is onto the job!

Thank you for reporting spam! You have not yet made a post outside of the Geeks' lounge, so I can't give you a green blocky yet. But here's a grey one :)

I am happy to flag any spam I come across but I don't want a reward so I won't be PMing you the link to the post I flag. It's a nice idea to offer it to get newer members to start flagging bad posts though.

>> child porn, rape videos

These only get a 6 month ban?

>> These only get a 6 month ban?

We're currently perma-banning about 200-300 members a day due to this crisis

Banned for six month for posts related to child porn and/or rape vids? Why not ban the entire subnet and inform the local intelligence agencies? I'm sure Putin knows how to handle this filth. I mean, c'mon. Six months? Or did i misunderstood?

As I said:

>> We're currently perma-banning

"Perma" as in "Permanent" :)

Nice effort from your side Nick. I've been reporting spam and other bad posts on a daily basis, and all credit to the mods, they normally react within an hour. Keep it up.:)

As far as the goodie greenies goes, if others don't want it, throw some my way. It seems to get stuck on 100, whilst everything else moves up.;)

Is it "modeling" or hardcore, and are they obviously under 14 or 16(Interpol says it depends on the circumstances in Russia)? Because then you should contact the FBI.

This article may be from nine years ago, but nothings changed the reality of it: http://www.russiajournal.com/node/5808

>> Is it "modeling" or hardcore

I prefer not to click the links. I don't want the FBI to give me any special attention :)

The spam attack we are currently experiencing covers every conceivable kind of spam, including porn of all varieties but equally real estate, seo services, viagra and so on.

It is not some child porn ring that the FBI would be particularly interested in.

Our priority at the moment is in stopping the flood of spam from reaching DaniWeb members, which involves banning hundreds of newly created spam accounts every day. Once we have beaten these idiots, then we can worry about what if anything needs reporting to the authorities.

Are the spammers bots, or real people? Is there some sign-up filters in place to prevent bots from creating accounts?

We have re-captcha for account creating, but no email-activation. But it looks like a substantial percentage of the accounts are created by bots. Dani doesn't want to change anything in the registration-process, so the bots can have there merry way for now.

I suggest just a simple question answer together with the capcha on account registration. That will keep away almost all the bots, as they can get around the capcha, but they cannot so easily get around answering the question.

Question example: What is the color of your neighbors white dog? (where the answer is within the question, but cannot be guessed by a bot) or any similar type of question.

I appreciate the suggestion and I fully agree with you that this will take care of a lot of our current problems. Dani however does not want to change the registration process..

Nick: I'm not sure it is fair to suggest Dani doesn't want to change the registration process, rather there are substantial practical problems involved in doing so courtesy of the highly customised nature of the code.

Kraai: Good idea, which I have forwarded to Dani.

I don't know if it's related, but I just signed up today and got a nice PHP error after the signup. Was there a recent change in the signup script to prevent the spammers from opening new accounts? It seems that I did successfully sign up, though, as I am posting! I am sorry that I did not save the error, but either it is reproducable and you can get the error easily, or it is not reproducable and therefore not a problem.

As for a "reward" for cleaning up spam: that will simply encourage more of it. It should be a community's responsibility to clean up the garbage, not a bonus. I'll be flagging them if I see them.

Thanks!

I suggest just a simple question answer together with the capcha on account registration. That will keep away almost all the bots, as they can get around the capcha, but they cannot so easily get around answering the question.

Question example: What is the color of your neighbors white dog? (where the answer is within the question, but cannot be guessed by a bot) or any similar type of question.

Just don't ask how deep the Nautilus dove in 20,000 Leauges Under the Sea, or how many days the trip took in Around the world in 80 Days! Sometimes the answer in the question is wrong.

Oh, and my neighbour does have a dog named "White". It is a black dog, with white socks. Again, misleading!

What to do?

When you see a post containing this Russian spam (or any spam for that matter), click the "flag bad post" button next to it and type something creative.

ok, Sure..

The posts that are weird writing, are they spam?

>> The posts that are weird writing, are they spam?

Depends on what you call weird writing. Spam usually has a link in it.

Update on the spammers:

It appears that reCAPTCHA has been cracked, so *a lot* of vBulletin-based forums have been the subject of spam-attacks for the last 8 days; including Daniweb.
Because of this Dani has decided to change the registration-process, so we're currently not getting anymore spammer-signups.

Now we just have to clean up the hundreds of "sleeper-accounts" (accounts that were created, but did not yet post spam) and after that everything is back to normal.

I would personally like to thank all members who have flagged spam in the last 8 days, we really appreciate the effort you all went trough to get us through this crisis!