Chat, Offtopic & Diverse: guest-view *allowed* again

[Caretaker]

To hamper the chinese and russian spambots who often try to post their trash in this particular board, it now (permanently) needs member login to view.

[RichardL]

Hmmm. Interesting that they focus on one board. Must be the word "chat".

Ricahrd L.

[Caretaker]

Yes, the number of .cn, .ru, .ua etc based ip's 'Viewing the board Chat, Offtopic & Diverse' got very noticeable, to the point of needing locking them out, now they'll waste their time and resource and getting an error message, and waste less server bandwidth here. I don't know why they fell in love with that particular board, maybe believing it would be less moderated than the main boards, thus giving a better survival chance to any spam post (if they ever got to post, which they don't anyway).

But am experimenting with better anti-chinese\russian measures at server level, if that turns out fine the board will eventually go back to normal guest view. Manageable here, but I can imagine the nightmare of running a very large forum, attracting 10.000's of spambots daily (here it's only around 1000 spam visits\day, exploding upwards if I lower some shields > example, take a look at the daily stats for 2013-03-15, 27.494 page views, normal is around 5.000...).

[Caretaker]

..& guest view allowed again, seems the spambots are under control.

[Caretaker]

& taken off guest view again, too much interest from chinese and russian spam-rats.

[Topdad]

Good morning "e" , if still an ongoing problem I'd contact the CIA they've been" perfecting ( theres a contradiction in terms ) /experimenting with better antiChinese\Russian measures " for years ,thinking about that poss YOU'D be able to help those clowns get there act right !! Thats my next holiday to Florida put on hold for some years BobH.

[muskrat]

We should try to get the cold war going again. Back then all these spamers and hackers would have worked for the Russian or Chinese gov's trying to crack the US military. Out of work now they focus their skills on us.
Cheers

[Caretaker]

As far as I can see, they want to advertise\sell things, like fake bags, fake shoes, fake watches, bogus 'enlargement' schemes, fake\illegal pills etc etc. The amount of 'guests' from (mainly) cn and ru regularly trying to register\post is staggering. All internet forums are affected, and are needing\using blocking systems.

[duTch]

  Maybe they could be redirected to another spambot site- but that'd affect even bona-fide inquisitors, and I'm sure you've better things to do.
 
  Maybe it's simply because of the fact it's 'Chat...", I'd reckon those sites be prime targets.??

If so, maybe try an obscure synonym for 'Chat'.?

  Good luck and thanks for the effort

[Caretaker]

The task is to make the spambot's 'job' impossible and of course prevent registering\posting. Needs some work regularly, and resources like http://www.stopforumspam.com/ are of big help.

Good luck and thanks for the effort

Thanks+

[Caretaker]

And back in public view, & see how it goes.