would Captcha help stop kitchen spammers?

woodburner · Post by **woodburner** » 03 Jul 2013, 15:06

There are a fair few of these lately, would it be possible to use captcha and a bar on posting links for the first say10 posts?

Alternatively how can we mount a DOS attack? How many millions does it take to jam their server?

JohnB · Post by **JohnB** » 03 Jul 2013, 15:50

Upgrading to the latest version of phpBB might help, as the anti-spam add ons will be more up to date. It's over 4 years since I was one of the people helping to test the upgrade to PowerSwitch, but it never happened!

RevdTess · Post by **RevdTess** » 03 Jul 2013, 19:00

JohnB wrote:Upgrading to the latest version of phpBB might help, as the anti-spam add ons will be more up to date. It's over 4 years since I was one of the people helping to test the upgrade to PowerSwitch, but it never happened!

+1!

Tarrel · Post by **Tarrel** » 03 Jul 2013, 20:34

What puzzles me is where they get the idea that Powerswitchers are prime targets for new kitchens. I mean...why not Viagra, or Payday loans, or PPI claims?

(Now..where did I put that Hygiena catalogue?)

ETA; I assume "xxxx" means the "K" word!

JohnB · Post by **JohnB** » 03 Jul 2013, 20:43

Tarrel wrote:What puzzles me is where they get the idea that Powerswitchers are prime targets for new xxxx. I mean...why not Viagra, or Payday loans, or PPI claims?

(Now..where did I put that Hygiena catalogue?)

ETA; I assume "xxxx" means the "K" word!

Because we sometimes lapse in Pythonisms, the Pythons performed the Spam Song, Spam is food and therefore prepared in a kitchen, so we must want to buy kitchens

.

Edited to add: You're right that k1tchens is regarded as a swear word. My mind is now boggling about what activities, other than cooking, go on in them

.

RenewableCandy · Post by **RenewableCandy** » 03 Jul 2013, 23:30

Captcha would halt me in my tracks: I find the letters difficult to read, and the voice version, which is usually in Usonian with pronounced Southern drawl (thus eliminating all possible consonamts) indistinguishable from a drowning rat.

Of course, you may think that's a good thing...

JohnB · Post by **JohnB** » 03 Jul 2013, 23:52

RenewableCandy wrote:Captcha would halt me in my tracks: I find the letters difficult to read, and the voice version, which is usually in Usonian with pronounced Southern drawl (thus eliminating all possible consonamts) indistinguishable from a drowning rat.

Of course, you may think that's a good thing...

It wouldn't need to be on each post, just for new user registration. On the Permaculture UK Forum, rather than using CAPTCHA, I use an add on that asks a question that only someone who knows a bit about permaculture could answer, and it almost totally stopped the problem.

So Candy wouldn't need to worry. I suspect she may be a genuine poster, as it would take a lot of dedication to make that many posts before starting to advertise food preparation rooms!

RenewableCandy · Post by **RenewableCandy** » 04 Jul 2013, 00:19

The kitchen in Chateau Renewable is fecking fantastic! But it's not for sale

Post by **adam2** » 04 Jul 2013, 08:32

It is not just powerswitch that is targeted by the presently popular spammers, they are everywhere on all sorts of forums.

And whilst they are in the majority, we still get other spamars. Today I have deleted about a dozen "members" for the usual adverts, and a couple for other spam.

Of course it might be tempting to telephone them and say what you think of them, taking not to break the law, and not to mention this forum.

UndercoverElephant · Post by **UndercoverElephant** » 09 Jul 2013, 22:08

adam2 wrote:It is not just powerswitch that is targeted by the presently popular spammers, they are everywhere on all sorts of forums.

Yes, but why kitchen spammers all the time? Why on earth do they think that Powerswitch is a good place to post spam about kitchens??? I mean >90% of it is kitchen spam. I don't get it.

Post by **adam2** » 10 Jul 2013, 12:03

I suspect that they like this forum because a simple word search programe would suggest it to be more relevant than say a forum about computers or pets.

There are many disscussions about the merits of vegetarian diets versus those containing meat, or the merits of different fuels for cooking, or about producing ones own food, and about improving or refurbishing homes.
A simple word search programe would suggest, probably falsely that this is the place to advertise what they sell.

Another forum very badly hit by them is the IET forums, probably because it contains many references to and disccussions about the proper electrical wiring of what they are trying to sell.

Hopefully they will give up soon, numbers have declined from a peak of 50 a day to just a handful.

Peter1010 · Post by **Peter1010** » 11 Jul 2013, 06:36

UndercoverElephant wrote:
adam2 wrote:It is not just powerswitch that is targeted by the presently popular spammers, they are everywhere on all sorts of forums.
Yes, but why kitchen spammers all the time? Why on earth do they think that Powerswitch is a good place to post spam about xxxx??? I mean >90% of it is kitchen spam. I don't get it.

My understanding is that this type of spam on forums is not targeted at the members of that forum, but at search engines like google that crawl those forums. The more and diverse the links they can get back to their websites the higher their ranking on search engines like google.

Peter1010 · Post by **Peter1010** » 11 Jul 2013, 06:50

Peter1010 wrote:

My understanding is that this type of spam on forums is not targeted at the members of that forum, but at search engines like google that crawl those forums. The more and diverse the links they can get back to their websites the higher their ranking on search engines like google.
Also its not necessary the kitchen website owner that is doing the spamming , but a third party organisation that was employed by that website to enhance their google ranking. So contacting the kitchen website owner may not help (they probably wont know about it). Unfortunately once your forum appears on the list of good forums to spam to, its almost impossible to get your forum removed from those lists

Catweazle · Post by **Catweazle** » 11 Jul 2013, 09:56

Alternatively, visit the website, fill in the "Contact" form with a load of ficticious details and let them chew on it. They'll soon get the idea.

UndercoverElephant · Post by **UndercoverElephant** » 12 Jul 2013, 18:17

Catweazle wrote:Alternatively, visit the website, fill in the "Contact" form with a load of ficticious details and let them chew on it. They'll soon get the idea.

I am now doing this every time I see kitchen spam. It's mainly one site. I've sent them about 30 fictitious sales enquiries so far.