When I look down into the "Who's Online" bar, I sometimes see users who haven't had their accounts activated for a long time, such as CorkUncooke. Considering that a few new users would really spice the place up, I was confused by why they were not yet registered yet; however, when I remembered my question about the users with wonky user names that got banned, I started to think that someone like CorkUncooke could actually be a bot.
Is my hunch correct and this is part of a system that prevents bots from wrecking havoc? I think this is the case because the link in CorkUncooke's Homepage bar on the profile is very wonky.
All new accounts have to be activated by confirming the email address that was entered at registration. It can help to prevent spam as users who aren't activated can't post but most decent bots can check for and confirm those emails anyway so it's only a small part of the larger puzzle. Generally, bots are going to get through and then it just becomes a game of manual removal.
Gibberish e-mail address? Check.
Questionable IPs (how can this guy be logging in from both the Ukraine AND China simultaneously)? Check.
Completely idiotic website address? Check.
I'm banning him. Lurk he will no more. I'm always tempted to just prune the "unactivated" accounts that lurk around, but I won't as I don't know how many of those are actually real users and not bots. But since they can't be arsed to get proper e-mail addresses / verify them, then they obviously must not care. Speaking of which, just checking now we've got 1598 users that are still in the "Awaiting activation" group.
(And another thing I've noticed, most spambots seem to have "birthdays" between 1975 and 1985. I don't know if that means anything or not.)
(EDIT: Words, words.)
Can I ban Brolveevatt then?
He (it?) Is /always/ online, usually on the "Don't have access" page.
(01-14-2014, 05:38 PM)Vipershark Wrote: [ -> ]Can I ban Brolveevatt then?
He (it?) Is /always/ online, usually on the "Don't have access" page.
Yep! Quick research shows that it's a duplicate account of CorkUncooke, follows the same three checks that it went through (e-mail gibberish, IP ranges, idiotic website). Although I have a feeling that they'll still linger even when banned, so I'm actually just gonna up and delete those two accounts.
(EDIT: There we go. No more fake users taking up space.)
(01-15-2014, 08:48 AM)E-Man Wrote: [ -> ]Guys, it looks like CorkUncooke is back.
http://www.vg-resource.com/member.php?ac...&uid=26077
He/it doesn't look too much like a bot this time (i.e. no bizarre homepage address), but would you mind checking it out to make sure?
Not if I have anything to say about that. It's using the same IP addresses that it used on the old account, so just to make sure that bugger isn't coming back, I'm banning all of 'em.
I can't confirm if that person is a spambot or not, so I'll have to leave 'em alone.
Okay, fair enough. I'll let you know if I find any other suspicious users, RTB.
The account is unactivated; it really isn't a big deal...
Ture, but I just wanted to point it out in case RTB wanted to do anything about it.
I wouldn't blame him if he doesn't give two hoots about a bot that keeps coming back over and over again no matter what he does.
(01-16-2014, 07:49 AM)E-Man Wrote: [ -> ]Considering that CorkUncooke is pulling a Terminator on us, got any other strategies with dealing with the spam bot, RTB?
Easy, delete the bot again, ban the bot's username so he can't register with that anymore.
