Philosophical Vegan Forum

Have you guys noticed that we're getting more bots than ever? Bots that post in Russian, spam links, etc..
I have moved a few of their topics, but where are they all coming from, and why so many right now?

I've been moving them too. Perhaps something wrong with the security questions?

miniboes wrote:I've been moving them too. Perhaps something wrong with the security questions?

They may also be human "robots"... People in low income parts of the world paid to join a list of forums each day to copy/paste spam. I had an issue with it in a forum I ran. Limiting new members to just one post in the welcoming area, until a mod sees it and can lift that ban may help, if the forum software here can do that.

*Shrugs*

Sapphire Lightning wrote:

miniboes wrote:I've been moving them too. Perhaps something wrong with the security questions?

They may also be human "robots"... People in low income parts of the world paid to join a list of forums each day to copy/paste spam. I had an issue with it in a forum I ran. Limiting new members to just one post in the welcoming area, until a mod sees it and can lift that ban may help, if the forum software here can do that.

*Shrugs*

Do they still get paid if we remove their posts?

EquALLity wrote:Do they still get paid if we remove their posts?

Remember they are technically not "removed", if you know what I mean.

RedAppleGP wrote:

EquALLity wrote:Do they still get paid if we remove their posts?

Remember they are technically not "removed", if you know what I mean.

But they can't be found nonetheless, which means the employers have no way of making sure the employee actually did it.

miniboes wrote: But they can't be found nonetheless, which means the employers have no way of making sure the employee actually did it.

Well what if the bots are one of us? Or the bossman takes the guy's word for it?

I don't know how they would get paid, I would imagine it has something to do with just answering the security questions or Captchas for the bot to do the rest of the work. If it is a part of the bot, the employer could easily confirm that the bot was able to post the actual message.

Regardless, I think limiting new users to the Welcome forum and to one post per day until a mod can see that they introduced themselves properly will cut down on a lot of this junk.

Sapphire Lightning wrote:I don't know how they would get paid, I would imagine it has something to do with just answering the security questions or Captchas for the bot to do the rest of the work. If it is a part of the bot, the employer could easily confirm that the bot was able to post the actual message.

Regardless, I think limiting new users to the Welcome forum and to one post per day until a mod can see that they introduced themselves properly will cut down on a lot of this junk.

I think it's live humans answering the question and being paid for it. Or somebody might have published an accepted answer somewhere. It might be better to just remove the security question now.

It's pretty easy to remove the spam so far, and they can't post active links... so I don't think they're getting much use of spamming here. We catch them pretty quickly, since we have people in a bunch of time zones.

I'd hate to make it more difficult for legitimate members to post. And having to approve members would probably be as much work as moving bot posts. They mostly just post one or two times.

I switched the plugin back to a simple image. We'll see if that helps or not. It probably won't help.