Spammer alert

Just advising that on the old aegis forum site mfbaby is a bot spammer thing. Should probably be removed...

There are a lot of them, coming three or four times a day now. I can't get rid of them fast enough.

(Amarra)

Hmm...does anyone know what we can do about that?

<-----points to the use of the new emoticon.

Yay for new emoticons!

I have no idea. I'd thought you guys had set it so someone had to be accepted manually before they could post, which would have solved that problem at the start. I don't really know how things work, though. Is that possible?

It brings these new forums into question, too. It said I couldn't confirm Meghan because the person doesn't exist, but obviously she does and was able to post, as well, even though the link in the confirmation email didn't work. What will happen if the bots find this site, too? :S

We did indeed have it set so that you had to be accepted as a member BEFORE you can post...so I've no idea why these bots are somehow getting through.

As for this forum, I'm getting a few minor technical glitches too - so I'll look into that. If anyone else is having issues, message me.

...And yes, YAY for new emoticons!

The bots started posting on December 3rd or 4th, if that helps you look into what might have changed. I'd been deleting all the posts a few times a day, but it's just too much.

My goodness the bots are so bad...
Also I don't know if this is anything to be concerned about, but when I logged in today on the new site here, I noticed that google was logged in as a bot? I'm wondering if that would just be the advertisement at the top of the page... or some bot to start spamming this site too?

I'm not sure which, so it may be a good idea to look at that if it is concerning. No worries if it isn't.

I know some of the search engines have spider bots that scan through all a website's pages to be able to add them to their database or whatever it is, for when people do searches. I don't know if that's the same thing, though,

Just to let you guys know - we (Harv, Monica and I) went back to the older website and deleted the bots and the nasty threads.

They aren't supposed to get through, so I've no idea whats happened so that they can. That would something I'd have to pose to Micah, the tech guy.

Oh dear. Now it seems they've started sending spam PM's instead of posting.

I noticed that they're spamming my PM too. Yeesh, they just don't quit, do they? How horrible.

Yeah, I saw that. There wasn't anything I could do. I just banned the member, sorry about that everyone. :S

It's okay it's not your fault. Nothing you can do against the wrath of spam bots.

As for the "old site" one is not aware of this since one is not bound to said realm of influence. However, one does have knowledge concerning the digital entitties known as "bots" which frequent this forum. This information has been gathered from a thread in the Forumotion.com FAQ section. If you wish to read the original thread on the Forumotion Forum one has provided the link: Bots - Who and What are They?.

Quote :

Bots - Who and what are they
by Darren1 on September 13th 2009, 6:06 am

Bots.

What are they?

Bot's, short for "Robots"
A quick definition from Wikipedia, verified by numerous sites across the web.

Wikipedia wrote:
Internet bots, also known as web robots, WWW robots or simply bots, are software applications that run automated tasks over the Internet. Typically, bots perform tasks that are both simple and structurally repetitive, at a much higher rate than would be possible for a human alone. The largest use of bots is in web spidering, in which an automated script fetches, analyses and files information from web servers at many times the speed of a human. Each server can have a file called robots.txt, containing rules for the spidering of that server that the bot is supposed to obey.

In addition to their uses outlined above, bots may also be implemented where a response speed faster than that of humans is required (e.g., gaming bots and auction-site robots) or less commonly in situations where the emulation of human activity is required, for example chat bots.


What do these robot's do?

99% of Internet Bots usually just "reference" your site to increase their knowledge of it, and give the most accurate & up-to-date information about your site.
In addition, when the Google Bot visit's your site, it also is giving you a "Cache" version of your site.


So what's the other, remaining 1% of these bot's?

Well, this 1% is an astonishingly large amount of bot's.
These very rare & very few bots can do what the other bot's cannot do.
They can:

Register on your site
Create NEW topic's on your site
Reply to current topic's on your site
Spam your forum


So, how exactly can I tell who's a bot, and who's not a bot?

Well, there's no rule of thumb to detect weather or not it is a bot unfortunately.
However they generally have a really "out there" names such as "123456789sdjhiuj" which can also be a spammer, the other way you could tell is it has a really stupid email address.


I want to know what bot's are enabled on my forum, can I do it?

Yes you can, just add "/robots.txt" to the end of your forum's URL, so it will look like: http://help.forumotion.com/robots.txt

Can I control these bot's?

No, as forumotion does not allow user's to access their database they cannot access the Bot's management.
However, if you want you CAN disallow robot's visiting your site altogether. This is strongly not-recommended as it will decrease your "Google Page Reference" and possibly decrease the number of people visiting the forum.
If you still want to disallow the bot's from visiting, then =>
Navigate to: Admin panel >> Display ( Tab ) >> Homepage / Generalities >> Scroll down until you see "Additional meta tags" >> Click the >> Select the default "Create a meta tag type", then fill in the details:
"name" attribute : Robots
"content" attribute : noindex, nofollow


Now just hit "Add" If you get a blank page, just give it a few minutes and refresh
If it exceeds 5 minutes, just go to the URL bar, and remove everything but your forums url, thus making it the basic URL.

So on the support forum it would look like: http://help.forumotion.com/admin/index.forum?part=themes⊂=index&mode=tags&action=edit_tag&tag_id=0&extended_admin=1&sid=f9a5282903c2f290955ab0b03937b667

Then when I make it the basic URL it looks like: http://help.forumotion.com

So, what bot mean's what?

Google bot
The Google bot is the bot from our friend Google, he's just referencing your forum for their database.
He will visit your forum daily no matter what your activity is.

Yahoo! bot
The Yahoo! bot is the bot from Yahoo!.
He is also just referencing your forum, however you need a few members on your forum to persude him to view your forum

Msn bot
This is the bot from Microsoft, msn, bing.com.
You have to have HUGE popularity for him to visit your forum.

Note: It may take up to 3 full weeks for your forum to be index on any one of these bot's.

And that's all folks

A huge thanks to Master Marc & ComKid for confirming the robot attribute's


Last edited by darren1 on September 13th 2009, 10:09 am; edited 1 time in total