Keeping the spammers away

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First off, my goal here is to protect the regulars and keep out the spammers.  I’m using a specific spam service that is designed to keep known spamme
[See the full post at: Keeping the spammers away]

Susan Bradley Patch Lady/Prudent patcher

3 users thanked author for this post.

deuce120, geekdom, HiFlyer

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“…if you are a registered user, or an AskWoody plus member you shouldn’t see the filtering software or the count down … If you need me to whitelist your IP because it’s flagging you as a spammer even though you are not, let me know.”

I get stuck in your new ‘filtering count down’ when clicking on an email link from AW telling me I have a thread reply.  Intent good, but this needs tweaking.  And .. as I use different IPs, whitelisting ain’t no good either.  Didn’t this work okay in the past w/o filtering?

1 user thanked author for this post.

Cee Arr

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I’m not blocked unless using Nord VPN, then about 1/4 of their server choices  are rejected by AW.   Null problemo;  I suppose that’s a good way to insure a good choice.   Or…….

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RSS feed has stopped working.

When checking link I get “Anti-Crawler Protection is activated for your IP” page

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HiFlyer

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I got the anti-crawler too, without the vpn.  Refreshed the connection and it’s o.k.

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I just got the antispam crawler. IP won’t help as it assigned and changed by the ISP .

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Same here – my I.P. address is beyound my control. So is this horrid new anti-spam software, which pounces on me every time as soon as I access the site, before I get a chance to log in. If anyone has the power to tell it my IP address is IP 146.200.14.6
and I’m not into spam, I just like to browse the forums, I’d be very grateful!

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I got the Anti-Crawler Protection prompt this morning. It did make me ‘Laugh-Out-Loud’.
I thought I’d let the recipient aware of their place on the WWW.
https://community.bt.com/t5/BT-com-Community-feedback/Anti-Crawler-Protection-Software/td-p/2138177

Keep ’em coming ?

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snake oil for the site. Nice if you want no-one to read anything on here and move on elsewhere :-{|} bit like the banner a few weeks ago ¬

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My apologies!  I’ve turned off the anti-crawler setting.  Can you let me know if it’s better now?

Susan Bradley Patch Lady/Prudent patcher

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It’s off right now.  Refreshing .. after being caught by the anti-crawler 5-6 times today.

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Much better – instant access once again! I wonder if the disadvantages of this anti-crawler software outweigh the advantages?

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Wait three seconds and the site comes up.

On permanent hiatus {with backup and coffee}
offline▸ Win10Pro 2004.19041.572 x64 i3-3220 RAM8GB HDD Firefox83.0b3 WindowsDefender
offline▸ Acer TravelMate P215-52 RAM8GB Win11Pro 22H2.22621.1265 x64 i5-10210U SSD Firefox106.0 MicrosoftDefender
online▸ Win11Pro 22H2.22621.1992 x64 i5-9400 RAM16GB HDD Firefox116.0b3 MicrosoftDefender

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I have ExpressVPN running and have, in three separate tries to log on, been able to access AskWoody without any blocking or adverse messages.

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[HiFlyer]

Just now Nord VPN has gotten the “403 forbidden” message 4 times in a row.  5th time worked.  In Germany using dufferent  German servers via Nord each time.

The above post was blocked with this notice.

• Your message was blocked. Please contact the administrator via sb@askwoody.com*** Forbidden. Your IP belongs to a high spam risk network. Please, try again without VPN. ***

So I disconnected Nord and went naked and it now works .   Aggravation.

 

• This reply was modified 4 years, 2 months ago by HiFlyer. Reason: you blocked me with a vpn
• This reply was modified 4 years, 2 months ago by HiFlyer. Reason: clarity

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What you are seeing now is the “normal” blocking not my anti-crawler test.

Susan Bradley Patch Lady/Prudent patcher

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HiFlyer

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Even NordVPN has dirty IP addresses used by spammers, unfortunately it seems you have been assigned/chosen them. It’s unrelated to the anti-crawler but also annoying. I can only say that VPN’s no matter where or whom, always get polluted by trolls/miscreants and spammers.
I know your a long-time member @HiFlyer but, the site needs protected.(outwith our control)

Windows - commercial by definition and now function...

2 users thanked author for this post.

HiFlyer, Kirsty

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Null problemo.  My aggravation is with Nord,  but  I don’t understand Microfix’s final comment.

“(outwith our control)” ??

 

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Microfix

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we can’t conrol the people behind VPN’s creating dirty IP addresses, and neither can NordVPN until it’s too late, is what I meant.

Windows - commercial by definition and now function...

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HiFlyer

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RSS feed in Outlook now working again

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Have yet to run into any nag screens, despite never having created an account.

But I have seen my posts seemingly never get approved, something that never happened before. I’m curious if this one will be approved.

I’m not against creating an account–I just never needed one before, and it was one less bit of hassle. I even subscribe to the (free) Newsletter.

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HiFlyer

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Spam post ? really ?

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Exactly!  So much for ‘lets try this’ AKA Google Analytics – the “Gold Standard” and ‘lets try that’ AKA Web Crawler.  How about lets just leave things as they are and not add more “stuff” that does not necessarily improve the users experience. In essence ‘Ask Woody’ is a forum for the members and hopefully by the members.

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It’s not just the users experience I worry about.  It’s the moderator workload.  In this case this specific plug in is to help to scan for spammers. Behind the scenes every moderator here does a TON of work.  Ultimately I want to balance their workload and give them back some of their hard earned time.  With technology you never can just leave things be, you have to be one step ahead of the attackers.  For sure I will be giving feedback to the plug in vendor.  In my testing I didn’t have issues.  Clearly in production we did.

Susan Bradley Patch Lady/Prudent patcher

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wavy, HiFlyer

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The plug in in that caused the issues yesterday is no longer operational.  Your experience now is the normal wordfence firewall.  Two links and hardly any text means that to the firewall you looked like a spammer.  You need to type more in your post so it’s not seen as a spammer.

Susan Bradley Patch Lady/Prudent patcher

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HiFlyer

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I, too, have an issue now and then when attempting to connect to AskWoody when my VPN (PIA) is connected. I either switch locations or turn it off. The information that I gain from this site is more important to me than me attempting to remain anonymous.

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HiFlyer

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Susan Bradley wrote:

Two links and hardly any text means that to the firewall you looked like a spammer.

The spam system can run every link posted with VirusTotal in order to clear/block links.

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HiFlyer

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[NaNoNyMouse]

I used to run a forum site myself, so I know it’s a tough gig. Spammers were a constant source of annoyance back then, and I’m sure that in the meantime things haven’t got any better

My strategy was to firstly not allow anonymous posters (which I’d guess goes against the ethos here), but, more importantly, once someone had registered and their first couple of posts had been moderated and accepted, then they weren’t subjected to any further monitoring. Spammers pretty much always reveal their true colours in their first post, and once they’d revealed themselves they were immediately banned

That way, I kept the spam posts off the site, but without alienating the core users. I was using vBulletin as the forum software. Don’t know how feasible that would be with your current software, but maybe some variation on the approach would be possible, whereby the spam trap would only apply to anonymous users, and registered users who didn’t yet have a post to their name? If that could be automated, then it would hopefully also help to reduce the moderators’ workloads

Just a thought

• This reply was modified 4 years, 2 months ago by NaNoNyMouse.

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HiFlyer

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