Can we do something about the spam bots?
Verified emails? Capatchas? A waiting period for new accounts?
They're getting really bad right now
I don't understand the motivation
What's in it for the spammer to necro random Legacy threads?
Originally Posted by GreatWhale
I'm pretty sure they just crawl around, registering anywhere they can and then posting.
"The Ancients teach us that if we can but last, we shall prevail."
—Kaysa, Elder Druid of the Juniper Order
They usually have some bad links they post too, I have to assume since we're getting just spam bots, that it's a disgruntled former(?) user.
I don't know, I guess that is possible, but having helped run other old timey forums like this, there are usually just tons of bots that try to register everywhere they can, regardless of what sort of forum it is. They just crawl for registration pages that the "bot" can solve, then post whatever nonsense they are trying to sell. Or, post something innocuous and if that doesn't get removed, eventually circle back and post spam.
"The Ancients teach us that if we can but last, we shall prevail."
—Kaysa, Elder Druid of the Juniper Order
It's just odd and silly to see the nefarious plans play out with the initial steps of posting "great post, good read!" to random 4 year old threads.
I guess one day those posts will be the foundation of something truly evil, but until it gets there seems an awful lot like a Underwear Gnomes scheme lol
Yeah, I don't realistically understand it, but I guess if you have the bot, a computer and internet, it's basically "free" to do? I mean, not really, but close I guess. Who know, just one of those odd things that is just constantly happening despite there being little to no actual upside. It was happening 20 years ago, long before GPT or anything like it. Although fora like this were much more widespread back then.
"The Ancients teach us that if we can but last, we shall prevail."
—Kaysa, Elder Druid of the Juniper Order
Example, this post:
https://www.mtgthesource.com/forums/...=1#post1104611
There's a link to an online game concealed in the post.
Yeah I think it's basically free to do, and it's not really all that evil and horrible, but it's annoying.
It's a cheap means/try to increase what at least used to be a PageRank-relevant score component: the number of links that point towards your website, that appear on and originate from established/legit other websites. I doubt it works very well these days, but since the cost to engage in stuff like this is close to 0, it's still being done.
I don't think we'll be the first to find a universally effective antidote, but I will see what I can do about it if I find some time this weekend.
The only real effective antidote at this point is charging a registration fee (and then refunding the non-bots) or using complicated CAPTCHA.
The invasion of the paraphrasers and link-hiders is upon us.
I'm still on it, I mostly delete them all in the morning (here) and afternoon. Stuff they get in at night, well, I generally don't have time to check again until the morning.
"The Ancients teach us that if we can but last, we shall prevail."
—Kaysa, Elder Druid of the Juniper Order
Thanks for the noble effort.
Do you want us to report them to make it easier for you?
Either way, if you see something that looks off, feel free to report it. I check every new post, making sure non have bad links or whatever, but it is possible some might slip through the cracks. Also, I tend to be a bit busy on the weekends, so those might hang around a bit more until Monday, so no harm in reporting stuff, if you see it.
"The Ancients teach us that if we can but last, we shall prevail."
—Kaysa, Elder Druid of the Juniper Order
Every new post! Why, that must take, minutes! Tens of minutes even!
Thanks for everything H :D
Cheers.
On that note, there is a 1h cd on reporting stuff.
Maybe this could be reduced.
BTW seems like either the guys behind it or the neural networks have advanced and they either change the color of their hyperlinks to be the same as regular text or to background color and hide it in some corner.
are they still links or just text they want to get into the wage so when google scrapes it it gets picked up?
Actual links which look like something almost legit.
Probably spamming them to show up on google.
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