I think they repost things for a while at first because most forums won't allow you to post links to external sites until you've made n amount of posts and been a member for x amount of days.

Many thanks to all users that are contributed to this thread. I'm reviewed all and deleted the post and all the users implicated in this. Thanks a lot of! Its a great job!

I suggest adding a "Report this post as spam" to the forum, only for logged users; it would be more immediate than copying a spam link and pasting it in this thread. I've seen this feature in many forums around the web, and it works.

Also as I and others have said before, if you could also add the number of posts made by the user (either beside or under their User ID) it would further help.

I agree with both posts above.

Most other forums have atleast some way to deal with spam, and these Bots do not look like targeted spam... just "opportunistic" one. In the internet, there is a huge gap between being unprotected and even only slightly protected.

There are free measures against Bots in the internet, here's just one i found: https://captcha.com/. That would help so incredibly much.

You enter the cockpit of your new Kratom mech, and look over the controls.
So much cleaner than your last one. Touchscreen displays, customizable to the individual user. No more re-learning the weapon controls every time you received a "new" mech... Sometimes, parts of the last pilot were never found. You shudder at the thought.

It's doable...

One thought...
Have a bit of code that looks at the length of the title...
If it is longer than 20 characters, file the post in the "to be reviewed" category...
And flag the user name and IP address (Unfortunally, I bet this changes every time)
It would be hard to ban someone because there is nothing stopping Joe123 from coming back as Joe124...

Have a bit of code that looks at the length of the title...

I agree on the "to be reviewed" stuff, but checking for character length (especially such a short one) is not going to work.
An idea that might work (most of the time) is checking if it contains any urls, and if they aren't whitelisted (this site, IFDB, Wikipedia, GitHub, etc.) put it under mandatory reviewing. Will have some false positives, but it's comparably easily implemented.

Otherway... there are professional anti-spam services, and many of them offer free services for "private" or small website. (I don't know if textadventures.co.uk counts as such... there's no company behind it, but it does make some income, amirite?)

I though new games have to be categorized before being released, or doesn't this applies to WIP games?

I guess WIPs can sneak through.
Maybe it would be worth requiring HTML games to have at least a couple of internal links or some javascript?

I'm not sure how this has appeared, though. It seems like posting here would need more thought than most spambots possess. Analysing a forum form and working out which kinds of data to put in which boxes, maybe a bot could do that. But working out what kind of file to upload so the site will accept it seems like it would require some degree of understanding; and I can't imagine it's worth the spammer's time to have a human doing it.

I guess spamming the given e-mail is just a pityiful act of revenge, huh? And probably illegal, too.

Better to report to the email provider. They appear to be selling fake passports, which is one of the things gmail is (or at least used to be) fairly heavy-handed in cracking down on.

Also, I'm wondering how hard it would be to add rel="ugc" to all outbound links posted on the forums. Or even just to links posted by users without some kind of 'trust' flag (number of posts, number of days, manually added, or whatever). There's a chance that spammers would realise that posting here will hurt their PageRank, and go to bother some other site.

Eh, my previous post got deleted because i had links to spammers in there... damn, i guess I'll double-post in the future.

Quick recap: i doubt using a referrer[sic] is going to work. People who use the services of such a spammer bot either don't care about PageRank or don't even know what SEO is anyway.

And it seems like the bots are now "targeting" games to. It's quite primitive, but it works.

Let me be the Cassandra: there is no future for this site if it continues to operate on security outdated since last millennium. Right now, spammers are sparse and midly annoying, but nothing stops me or anyone else from flooding this place to the point where it becoems unusable.

This thread → http://textadventures.co.uk/forum/general/topic/hq8bwfteeuij51hbrfv3kg/newbie

Has a bot posted something that looks like a legitimate question, waited for it to drop off the first page, and then edited the first post to include their links? Looks like a good way to put links there without anybody seeing them.

Quick recap: i doubt using a referrer[sic] is going to work. People who use the services of such a spammer bot either don't care about PageRank or don't even know what SEO is anyway.

What have referrers got to do with anything?

The spam posts are full of paragraphs of keyword-stuffed text around the links; but the text is machine-mangled incomprehensible. They're not expecting anybody to click on those links, because they would have zero success.

They are creating what looks to google like an article on this site, containing lots of keywords and a link to their site. They aren't doing this to get people to click on the links; they're doing it to steal some percentage of this site's pagerank.

Also noted that they are going back and editing their links into older posts which didn't initially look like spam (like reposts of other people's posts). That doesn't attract clicks, because people don't look at old posts. They're actively trying to post links where nobody will see them, which can only be because their intention is to manipulate the metrics of some search engine. With that in mind, their behaviour (nonsensical posts, editing really old posts, the huge volume of text, linking to specific pages on their site rather than a landing page) all makes sense.

The recommended way to deal with stuff like this is to add the attribute rel="ugc", which informs search engines that this link is "user generated content". The pagerank gains that would normally come from such keyword-stuffed pages suddenly become negative.

(It's worth noting that search engines are getting better at telling the difference between a mountain of keywords and an actual article; that's a constant arms race between them and the spammers. But marking the content makes it a lot simpler)

Right now, spammers are sparse and midly annoying, but nothing stops me or anyone else from flooding this place to the point where it becoems unusable.

Seen that before. On a site I used to maintain, we were getting upwards of ten thousand posts per day filled with this kind of garbage. Thankfully it only took a simple script to make them stop.

The spam posts are full of paragraphs of keyword-stuffed text around the links; but the text is machine-mangled incomprehensible. They're not expecting anybody to click on those links, because they would have zero success.

Now that you mention it, it seems obvious to me. Been on the wrong track then.

The spammers i found were either in a langauge foreign to me, or they were actually comprehensible (atleast those selling shisha-hoses and kratom). And i didn't expected the adds for stuff in bangalore to be anything but engrish in the first place.

Now i see the keyword spam. Regard anything i said above void until further notice (it could very well be that this forum is targeted by more than one spammer-group at the same time).

EDIT: Alright, some more info on the bot which edited its topic: turns out it was just copying a legitimate thread from the same sub-forum that had fallen to the next page. Apparently this is what happens if we don't react on dupes in time.

Btw, here's another one: http://textadventures.co.uk/games/view/_y9zpcyedeo7mt4vllcymw/https-www-godrejlahari-gen-in-blog-html

Two of the links in the comments merged into one unprocessable one. If i had hired those bots, i'd demand my money back!

annashetty:
http://textadventures.co.uk/forum/quest/topic/va2tawb6oe_f9zlbjkw2xq/can-i-do-this-text-processor-within-string-lists
Another one...

Oh, for further clarification on my earlier suggestion.
I would suggest doing a search and replace, changing all outgoing links <a href="some site that isn't this one"> to <a rel="ugc" href="whatever the link was">.

ugc stands for "user generated content", and tells google's bot that the link hasn't been approved by the site's owners or moderators. Therefore it won't result in the transfer of pagerank to the linked site, and if the post is deleted soon it can give the search engines an extra hint that the target site might be spamming.

My experience suggests that most spammers will notice pretty soon that posting on this forum is now counterproductive. When I added a linkrelations extension to my wiki sites, the keyword-rich spam posts stopped completely within a month.

Now with reCaptcha, i wait that this reduce the spam number.

As usual, thanks for all.

Actually... This on looks rather clever...
http://textadventures.co.uk/forum/quest/topic/hfuwkrv5a0mx6r4e6kdscq/custom-movements-for-vehicle

jdcosta283
Nov 21, 2019 2:43 AM new
Custom movement is a very important topic for in-vehicle purposes. In this matter that will be held a big movement facebook with all of the vehicle dealers. which person is buying a car or byk they have been driving license.

BTW... Love the captcha add-on...

http://textadventures.co.uk/forum/samples/topic/_o3yfgj0huu60qsdwlen6a/chi-ca-d-bong-da-online-tuyt-vi-nht
Another one...

http://textadventures.co.uk/forum/samples/topic/wekccxfwzkcznlb112gbsg/diu-hanh-thi-gian-trong-ca-d-bong-da-tren-mng-ra-sao
It's back...

flevank
http://textadventures.co.uk/forum/quest/topic/cvtzi26yt0eqlom1t5ikxq/object-type-and-object-not-recognizing-this-help-please-almost-solved#9196960a-97e9-4cf1-becd-1fbc1f59a6c1
!!!

The link is spam, delete the thread.

http://textadventures.co.uk/forum/quest/topic/qiqxeuhskea3a2gdr6tica/error-of-failing-to-add-cover-art-to-your-published-games

Taiphan000
Needs to be blocked, and told this is an English only site.

I think I got them all. 🤷🏻‍♂️

http://textadventures.co.uk/forum/quest/topic/q3mnhlw_-ugiaujs9dqjdg/object-links-not-working
frisfarry
And the farry is here:
http://textadventures.co.uk/forum/samples/topic/icwa6ldu7eapgqvvnj5miw/hng-dn-dng-ky-ca-cc-bong-da
And smartcityprestige is here:
http://textadventures.co.uk/forum/general/topic/mlspoximz0kvonsdtmsx4q/how-to-buy-and-sell-property-in-bangalore-in-www-prestigesmartcity-info

flevank
http://textadventures.co.uk/forum/quest/topic/0j-xnhegukorwbvyj3q3zw/act-if-a-player-talks-to-another-player

happyspace
http://textadventures.co.uk/forum/quest/topic/hjxqg94awu_zo-noah2-wg/if-player-sees-pages-gamebook

How funny... flevank has now posted in the thread that will get it removed... :D
That's like someone entering the police station and trying to rob it!!!

We're losing the spam war...

jasonbrough
http://textadventures.co.uk/forum/general/topic/8wbsalzdl0cmbjyppl4gtq/first-sci-fi-game

Flevank
Kravekratom

happyspace
http://textadventures.co.uk/forum/quest/topic/bbflrjo9tesvogf7r8hbsg/custom-player-name
frisfarry
http://textadventures.co.uk/forum/quest/topic/q3mnhlw_-ugiaujs9dqjdg/object-links-not-working

4 new ones in General Discussion and 1 in Quest Forum...

romsbay
http://textadventures.co.uk/forum/games/topic/mihhcphmluyfhcpklrtnha/download-roms-games

If you all can... continue to post names and links of spam here on this thread. Please don’t post anything on spam threads directly however because I have to delete all posts on spam threads. Thanks and happy spamfree holidays!! 👍🏽🤞🏽

Some more... I seem to remember the 1st one has been here before.

kravekratom

SoupyTheCat

Robertcer

shopstarbuzz

Can we please block kravekratom? Just see if the bot is active enough to create a new username?

Isn't it possible to add the captchas to the register process, too?

Xilova and Broauve can be deleted, both are spammer

Deleted post from this user selling teddy bears.
backlinkpro1x

But...

I wanted a teddy bear. :(

finsburyparkb is selling apartment rentals in Bangkok

Spammer

godrejroyalewoods

Definite spam:

http://textadventures.co.uk/forum/quest/topic/9wdgriljhkwlqxzuz5_8aw/looking-for-sexy-escorts-in-ahmedabad

Also, those escorts weren't as sexy as advertised.

worldwa is a spammer. Deleted two posts.

optimaze32 is a spammer. Posts deleted.

optimaze32
kennguyen6699

sigh

Eldoradonetin

Optimaze32

Not sure about this user; has made a couple of replies like "good idea" or "Is it interesting?" which seem to be out-of-context and make no sense for the threads they're in reply to, making me wonder if they're a bot. Plus this one, which is also irrelevant to the post it's replying to, but looks more overtly spammy.