[SyderK]

Yesterday's evening was great, until...

I haven't visited HL portal for a week or two, and I was not less than COMPLETELY FRUSTRATED when this message appeared on my screen . Now I can't log here from home (username "Syder"), download mods, updates etc. I wasn't the most active member of the community but I always behaved and stick to the rules whatsoever... What should I do now??? Please advise.

[Flipside]

You've probably got caught up in anti-bot procedures, I'm pretty sure an Admin will come along soon and see what can be done to fix it

Sorry 'bout that

[Snail]

You know, we're getting a lot of these. And a lot bots are getting through. I'm starting to think whatever we're doing isn't working.

[Jeff Vader]

[LordPomposity]

[Herra Tohtori]

turn whole forum into 162

[Zacam]

Fixed.

[rev_posix]

Syder, sorry about that.  Zacam has been devoting an insane amount of time in the never-ending battle against spammers and spam bots (one banning actually started up a very short lived attack against his machine and account on the forums).

Looking at the stats for the rule that you got caught under, there have been at least 90 potential bots that were stopped by it.  Unfortunately, sometimes legit members get caught in the nets, as it were.

I've let Zacam know as he knows the rule setup better than I and should be able to figure out a better way to implement the rule.

Snail, I'm not trying to get all pissy or come down on anyone, OK?  But have you ever run a forum before, especially one that is open to the world and has such a wide-ranging community?  Yes, the forums seem to be seeing more than it's fair share of spam right now, but a large part of the reason for that is that the forum is active.

Dead boards don't see much spam, less eyeballs to see adverts.

The current rule sets for spam blocking is freaking huge, and it keeps growing.  We are working on trying to implement better anti-spam measures, but it takes time and tweaking, and constant updates as the spammers keep adapting and figuring out new ways to bypass what is put up to keep them out.

Believe me, the forum would be all but useless if what has been done so far wasn't in place, 90% of the forum content would be adverts for hand bags and bigger peni. 

No body likes spam, least of all us admins and mods (we have to clean up the mess, which takes more of our precious and very limited free time).  And work is being done to try and stop it (or keep it down to a dull roar).  If you have any ideas, please, lets here them!  The more people thinking about this problem, the better the chances that someone will come up with a good idea.

[Jeff Vader]

Well, at least global mods can now quickly silence bots, unlike in the past when moderators had to delete spam posts as they popped up until an admin banned the account.

[LordPomposity]

Does the "you have been banned" page tell the user what avenue to take if they suspect it was a mistake? If not, we don't know how many people get caught up in this and just walk away.

Not trying to be critical here. Zacam is doing the best anybody could, and he's to be commended for it.

[Snail]

Does the "you have been banned" page tell the user what avenue to take if they suspect it was a mistake? If not, we don't know how many people get caught up in this and just walk away.

Yeah I agree, we could put a little message there saying we're cracking down on spambots and that if they're a human it was most likely a mistake.

[Syder]

LOTTTTTSSSS OF THANKS, GUYS!!!!!

[jr2]

Hmm, if someone had a virus that changed the proxy settings so that the user connected through the infected proxy, then probably that would also cause problems, no?  I'm sure it can still happen if you're not infected, but it wouldn't hurt to check your proxy settings and make sure they are correct.