joseaguerrero Posted June 8, 2022 Share Posted June 8, 2022 Yesterday, two new members were registered, got the top range as members and send a lot of private spam messages with links to porn sites. Many members send me warnings about it... Today banned those members and delete all their messages... It's the first time that happens in my board... The strange thing is that they have entered and massively sent that message to many members. And what has surprised me the most is that they have directly become top members as soon as they joined, when that is impossible. So it had to be a robot or something similar... The problem is that they have easily entered the web, which is completely updated (i have installed the last version)... Any idea to prevent this from happening again? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
opentype Posted June 8, 2022 Share Posted June 8, 2022 Adriano Faria, David N., joseaguerrero and 1 other 4 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Marc Stridgen Posted June 8, 2022 Share Posted June 8, 2022 Im not sure what you mean here by "Top members". We do have hcaptcha which has been added to help prevent these being created as often. There will however be times where these are manually created by individuals, so it will never stop everything joseaguerrero 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Andy Millne Posted June 8, 2022 Share Posted June 8, 2022 Some communities restrict their default member group from being able to send private messages. You can do this and then the system can move them to a higher group with elevated permissions once they have posted x publicly approved posts. David N., Clover13, Jim M and 1 other 4 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
joseaguerrero Posted June 17, 2022 Author Share Posted June 17, 2022 On 6/8/2022 at 12:42 PM, Marc Stridgen said: Im not sure what you mean here by "Top members". We do have hcaptcha which has been added to help prevent these being created as often. There will however be times where these are manually created by individuals, so it will never stop everything Yes, was very strange to see that one member who registered just some hours ago, had a Top Member RANGE. I'm admin of my board (obviusly) and I haven't got that kind of range until now. So was very strange to see that 🤔 On 6/8/2022 at 12:41 PM, opentype said: I deleted those two members and it didn't happen again. I will download file and install, thanks!!!! On 6/8/2022 at 12:45 PM, Andy Millne said: Some communities restrict their default member group from being able to send private messages. You can do this and then the system can move them to a higher group with elevated permissions once they have posted x publicly approved posts. Interesting idea, I'll try it, thanks for the advice 😉👍 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AlexWebsites Posted June 17, 2022 Share Posted June 17, 2022 (edited) Same thing happened to me overnight. They became a grand master in 24 hours...all PMs sent Got a lot of traffic for returning users though, from a PM...promising love. Must be some sort of bot. I flagged them for spam and have it set to delete the content. They both had emails from *zeroe.ml and IP 95.105.124.92 Here are the two users and you can see their ranks... Points example.... I changed my message settings for my default usergroup from unlimited to now: Edited June 17, 2022 by AlexWebsites Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CheersnGears Posted June 17, 2022 Share Posted June 17, 2022 (edited) They've gotten me before too. I put all members in a New Members group and they need to post a certain amount of content before they can send more than 2 PMs. 54 minutes ago, AlexWebsites said: 95.105.124.92 Thanks. I'm adding it to my CleanTalk ban list Edit: CleanTalk wouldn't allow me to add it because it was already part of my ban on Russian Federation IPs. I do recommend CleanTalk Edited June 17, 2022 by CheersnGears AlexWebsites 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Clover13 Posted June 17, 2022 Share Posted June 17, 2022 On 6/8/2022 at 6:45 AM, Andy Millne said: Some communities restrict their default member group from being able to send private messages. You can do this and then the system can move them to a higher group with elevated permissions once they have posted x publicly approved posts. We did this and it has been effective in stopping them. It's very rare for us to see them post enough content to gain PM access before the content gets flagged for clear boosting (we know the game they play well). However our members are active and help mitigate this issue by reporting bad actors that slip through the cracks. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mark H Posted June 17, 2022 Share Posted June 17, 2022 For those who may want to block them on the server level... Add the IP range 95.105.0.0/17 to the block list and that will eliminate that particular Russian Federation provider (95.105.0.0-95.105.127.255). Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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