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Topic: 10,000th Member (Read 6028 times) |
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ThudnBlunder
wu::riddles Moderator
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10,000th Member
« on: Sep 19th, 2007, 4:39pm » |
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The number of members has just passed 10000. In fact, the number of members has increased by 300 in the last couple of days! This ought to be a cause for celebration, yet something fishy is going on. There are almost 1000 members with names of the form newxxx@gmail.com, where x represents a digit and there are more that 500 members with names of the form nowxxx@gmail.com. In fact, now510@gmail.com was the 10000th member. What is more, none of these members ever post anything. And all of these 1500+ members seem to have joined in the last two weeks! Is a robot at work here?
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| « Last Edit: Sep 19th, 2007, 5:31pm by ThudnBlunder » |
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THE MEEK SHALL INHERIT THE EARTH.....................................................................er, if that's all right with the rest of you.
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Sameer
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Pie = pi * e
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Re: 10,000th Member
« Reply #1 on: Sep 19th, 2007, 5:28pm » |
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Yea, I bet this is a bot!! We probably should include a authentic signature for signing up on the forum.. This would probably require immediate attention from William.
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"Obvious" is the most dangerous word in mathematics.
--Bell, Eric Temple
Proof is an idol before which the mathematician tortures himself.
Sir Arthur Eddington, quoted in Bridges to Infinity
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ThudnBlunder
wu::riddles Moderator
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The dewdrop slides into the shining Sea
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Re: 10,000th Member
« Reply #2 on: Sep 19th, 2007, 5:34pm » |
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on Sep 19th, 2007, 5:28pm, Sameer wrote:| This would probably require immediate attention from William. |
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Yeah, these pseudo-members are probably wasting William's precious server resources.
Five new 'members' have joined in the last hour. But what is the point in it?
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| « Last Edit: Sep 19th, 2007, 5:37pm by ThudnBlunder » |
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THE MEEK SHALL INHERIT THE EARTH.....................................................................er, if that's all right with the rest of you.
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JiNbOtAk
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Hana Hana No Mi
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Re: 10,000th Member
« Reply #3 on: Sep 19th, 2007, 5:52pm » |
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Adding authentic signature is a good move, but what do we do with these xxx-bots ?
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Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?
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srn437
Newbie
the dark lord rises again....
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Re: 10,000th Member
« Reply #4 on: Sep 19th, 2007, 6:08pm » |
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Why do anything? They aren't causing any harm. Other than the server limit. But users cannot be deleted, so we must find the source any get it to stop.
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srn437
Newbie
the dark lord rises again....
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Re: 10,000th Member
« Reply #5 on: Sep 19th, 2007, 10:08pm » |
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Really? Before doing so, someone should interogate him. I will.
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Sameer
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Re: 10,000th Member
« Reply #6 on: Sep 19th, 2007, 10:28pm » |
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on Sep 19th, 2007, 10:08pm, srn347 wrote:| Really? Before doing so, someone should interogate him. I will. |
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bots like these are not easily dealt with except for making the server side code more robust!! Unless of course the person is dumb enough to run from the same machine!!
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"Obvious" is the most dangerous word in mathematics.
--Bell, Eric Temple
Proof is an idol before which the mathematician tortures himself.
Sir Arthur Eddington, quoted in Bridges to Infinity
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srn437
Newbie
the dark lord rises again....
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Re: 10,000th Member
« Reply #7 on: Sep 19th, 2007, 10:35pm » |
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Who would do this and why?
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Sir Col
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Re: 10,000th Member
« Reply #8 on: Sep 20th, 2007, 12:13am » |
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The reason they do this is to obtain publicity for their product/website. What these bots are programmed to do is to register and add a signature with a link to the owner's website. As this forum is very popular it is regularly indexed by the major search engines and they trawl all of the links from the main page, including the members page. One security measure easily implemented is to not allow signatures to be added until the member has made, say, ten posts, and ensure it is removed from the registration form. A script could be easily crafted so that if the registrant submits a signature then it must be a bot trying to register and the registration process can be terminated.
However, these annoying bots are also programmed to make posts which contain links. This is much more difficult to guard against.
Hence the most effective method is getting a human response during registration. This is sometimes achieved by getting the user to perform some random calculation, answer some trivia question, but often done by getting the user to enter the code embeddd in an image, called CAPTCHA. Unfortunately most of the bot engines - and, yes, creating these is big business - at the moment have work arounds for the standard CAPTCHA systems. A customised system is the best way forward here.
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towr
wu::riddles Moderator
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Re: 10,000th Member
« Reply #9 on: Sep 20th, 2007, 1:00am » |
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None of these accounts seem to link to a website though. If they have a link in their signature, it doesn't show up anywhere without them posting.
The only thing they're doing is taking up a little bit of server space, but even that shouldn't be much.
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srn437
Newbie
the dark lord rises again....
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Re: 10,000th Member
« Reply #10 on: Sep 20th, 2007, 7:10am » |
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Someone should delete them though.
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rmsgrey
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Re: 10,000th Member
« Reply #11 on: Sep 20th, 2007, 7:29am » |
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on Sep 20th, 2007, 1:00am, towr wrote:None of these accounts seem to link to a website though. If they have a link in their signature, it doesn't show up anywhere without them posting.
The only thing they're doing is taking up a little bit of server space, but even that shouldn't be much. |
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member profiles?
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towr
wu::riddles Moderator
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Re: 10,000th Member
« Reply #12 on: Sep 20th, 2007, 7:53am » |
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on Sep 20th, 2007, 7:29am, rmsgrey wrote:I don't see people's signatures under member profiles. And I don't recall any settings under my profile that might make that different. Do you see them?
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srn437
Newbie
the dark lord rises again....
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Re: 10,000th Member
« Reply #13 on: Sep 20th, 2007, 4:23pm » |
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By authentic signature, do you mean one of those image things where they can't copy and paste it? By the way, if you can't see their sig, how do you know that it's a link?
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JiNbOtAk
Uberpuzzler
Hana Hana No Mi
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Re: 10,000th Member
« Reply #14 on: Sep 20th, 2007, 5:45pm » |
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on Sep 20th, 2007, 12:13am, Sir Col wrote:| As this forum is very popular .. |
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Really ? Didn't notice. 
Actually, how many members could William's account support ?
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Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?
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Roy42
Senior Riddler
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Re: 10,000th Member
« Reply #15 on: Sep 20th, 2007, 7:10pm » |
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Well, i suppose only William would know that, but, how long has it been since anyone has seen him onlline, let alone post?
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Regards,
≈Roy42
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ThudnBlunder
wu::riddles Moderator
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Re: 10,000th Member
« Reply #16 on: Sep 20th, 2007, 7:29pm » |
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120 new members a day, one every 12 minutes!
Is srn347 making contingency plans?
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| « Last Edit: Sep 20th, 2007, 7:36pm by ThudnBlunder » |
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THE MEEK SHALL INHERIT THE EARTH.....................................................................er, if that's all right with the rest of you.
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srn437
Newbie
the dark lord rises again....
Posts: 1
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Re: 10,000th Member
« Reply #17 on: Sep 20th, 2007, 8:01pm » |
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Contingency? Anyway, they'll always stick out like a sore thumb by not posting, and having a name that seems like a robot's creation.
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| « Last Edit: Sep 20th, 2007, 10:37pm by srn437 » |
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mikedagr8
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Re: 10,000th Member
« Reply #18 on: Sep 20th, 2007, 9:16pm » |
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on Sep 20th, 2007, 8:01pm, srn347 wrote:| Contingency? Anyway, they'll always stick out like a sore thumb by not posting, and having a name that seems like robot's creation. |
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HEY, THAT'S OFFENSIVE!!!
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"It's not that I'm correct, it's that you're just not correct, and so; I am right." - M.P.E.
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srn437
Newbie
the dark lord rises again....
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Re: 10,000th Member
« Reply #19 on: Sep 20th, 2007, 10:36pm » |
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Sorry, perhaps I should of had the word a, or something. You don't need to YELL though. Did you just morph your name from robot's creation 101011010100110100 to mikedagr 8?
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| « Last Edit: Sep 21st, 2007, 6:18pm by srn437 » |
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mikedagr8
Uberpuzzler
A rich man is one who is content; not wealthy.
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Re: 10,000th Member
« Reply #20 on: Oct 4th, 2007, 3:56am » |
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Just a thought...
Our member count is now below 10K. What happened?
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"It's not that I'm correct, it's that you're just not correct, and so; I am right." - M.P.E.
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SMQ
wu::riddles Moderator
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Re: 10,000th Member
« Reply #21 on: Oct 4th, 2007, 4:05am » |
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William has been cleaning up the massive numbers of [fake-address]@gmail.com accounts.
--SMQ
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--SMQ
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Ghost Sniper
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Re: 10,000th Member
« Reply #22 on: Oct 9th, 2007, 10:16am » |
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on Oct 4th, 2007, 4:05am, SMQ wrote:William has been cleaning up the massive numbers of [fake-address]@gmail.com accounts.
--SMQ |
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I believe that he should add something to help protect the site from auto-registration. What I'm thinking is using what a lot of other sites do for registration, and that is having a picture with letters and numbers in it, and then having the person registering type in the characters. It won't hinder people who want to register, but it would stop spambots from registering.
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SMQ
wu::riddles Moderator
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Re: 10,000th Member
« Reply #23 on: Oct 9th, 2007, 10:25am » |
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It's called a CAPTCHA, and I guess there are software issues preventing one from being implemented here in the near future. Longer term I'm sure some similar system will be instituted.
--SMQ
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--SMQ
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towr
wu::riddles Moderator
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Re: 10,000th Member
« Reply #24 on: Oct 9th, 2007, 11:29am » |
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Before the last update the forum did, for a while, have that. But it wasn't compatible with that upgrade.
Also, spam-software can now crack many of those CAPTCHA's, so they don't help all that much anymore.
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