no topic exists

[solman]

What is going on?  I got 4 replies in my email and when I clicked on them, I got the no topic exists message!

[txbanditrydr]

Solman.... we got spammed pretty hard tonight.  Some 'hole posted over 20 messages in various forums.  They have been deleted... in several cases just the offending post was removed if it was part of an ongoing thread.

Sorry for the inconvenience.

[Ranger]

[

[txbanditrydr]

Shouldn't be too hard if you were online in the last couple of hours otherwise you have about a 1 in 50 shot at being right.  This one really messed things up though.  

[stormi]

Shouldn't be too hard if you were online in the last couple of hours otherwise you have about a 1 in 50 shot at being right.  This one really messed things up though.  

Geez,.. that after I killed about 20 from another spammer at about 3pm this aft.   It was kinda cool to get them in real time though.  The idiot made the mistake of responding to one of the posts I'd posted in, so I got notice of his handywork right away.

[CWO4GUNNER]

And I thought it was you who sent me that e-mail

Solman Some 'hole posted over 20 messages in various forums.

Lemme guess?  

[Ranger]

:

[stormi]

Geez,.. that after I killed about 20 from another spammer at about 3pm this aft.   It was kinda cool to get them in real time though.  The idiot made the mistake of responding to one of the posts I'd posted in, so I got notice of his handywork right away.

Before you killed the message (and assuming you had server access), did you manage to snag the IP and DNS where the spammer was broadcasting from?  

I don't usually bother, because 1.  we don't ban IPs.  2.  Even if we did ban IPs, it's only a temporary and very flawed solution, because the large majority of people use internet connections that have Dynamic IP addresses.  What that means is that when their IP changes, they can suddently get back on here, and some potentially innocent person can't get on.

[solman]

Thainks for the info and for the anti-spamming work.

[PitterB4]

FWIW... We CAN ban IPs (at least Paul and I can.).  It's really not worth it for the reasons Storm mentioned plus it's time consuming and most of the MFers are one hit wonders - the barrage us one night and never come back.

Thanks for the help, TX and Storm!  

[jfudo]

Can't you just set it up that new registries have to be approved?  For example, at the bottom of the page right now it says that FreeWebCam is the newest user.

[speedwaymaniac]

I'm sure that they can, however its another issue for the Admin's to deal with.

To do that it would require an admin to be sat at the machine 24/7 if it were to be run effectively / effeciently. Now for obvious reasons thats just not possible, which means there will be time delays and large collections of users to accept which still wont necessarily stop the hackers / spammers from accessing the site.

The best thing that might be possible is using the IP address track back to the ISP and inform them of the issue, they may be able to do something for you, however this is a long shot unless what is being done is strictly illegal.

[Ranger]

[Ranger]

[PitterB4]

Can't you just set it up that new registries have to be approved?  For example, at the bottom of the page right now it says that FreeWebCam is the newest user.

We can and we've discussed it.  The issues are what was stated above.  That's time consuming, too.  Plus legitimate new members often join specifically to ask a question.  It seems unfair to make them wait because of these a-holes.  

Ranger - that's an interesting suggestion but Paul and I are "limited" admins.  We don't have access to the tables and stuff.  Pete keeps that access himself.  The only way we have to ban an address is to find the post, look up the IP addresses for the post, then go into the admin panel and paste them into the "Ban Box" in there.