Silk Road forums
Discussion => Silk Road discussion => Topic started by: muskabuzz on January 22, 2013, 08:05 pm
-
the spam polluting our forums is not only demoralizing, it is also, given tor speeds, a phenomenal waste of time and (thus) money for all concerned.
there is no question that the openness of the forums is essential. it fills this community with a dynamism that mitigates the hermetic necessities of life on the darknet and promotes growth not only of business but also of thought, consistently leading us towards new potentialities.
but recently the forums feel like a much lesser place than this. often after a series of failed connections a user can look forward to a page dominated by scam advertising. this of course creates many more page views/failed attempts to get past, taxing resources for both man and machine - and elevating the temperatures of both.
it is not unreasonable to assume that some of the worst content here is driven by this very phenomenon; if one has a genuine problem and can't read about what is happening nor express themselves quickly, the delayed result is likely to be a rant. and then reading through rants, spams, and scam suspicions does not inspire great posts but instead creates more of the same, it's a circular problem which describes many recent periods on this forum.
fortunately for all of us this is not an impossible problem. many online communities have experienced the same phenomena and cured it through diverse means. we simply need to find a solution that fits this community. to do our part in such an endeavor the Muskabuzz will offer a bounty - 1/2 ounce of Fleetwood OG Kush (considered by many as the best cannabis on SR) to the best idea for killing the spam.
if you have such an idea let's hear it right here, please consider not only the effect on the community but also the practicality of implementation. the administrators have a lot on their plate right now but the right idea could help tremendously with conserving system resources and thus be very rational to prioritize.
if the idea is implemented or simply recognized as best by the SR administration you win the prize, in the absence of such approval we can have a poll to make sure the best idea emerges and earns a fitting reward. it seems likely that a winning idea could evolve between several participants, in which case we shall split the prize/ augment as necessary.
-
Require members to have More complex passwords; limit post per minute where user would require to enter double set of different captias and/or password verification for back to back post with in a set amount of time?
Not sure how that would work programming wise, but I'm just shooting ideas.
-
All we need is forum moderators who actually delete the spam. I'm not sure why moderators take so long to delete them. I guess they are not on very frequently.
If I could delete them I would do it for 1 oz per month. Hehe.
They need to find a way to make certain keywords like bitcoin and sale and $ in the headline automatically allows ANYONE. To delete that thread. It's a simple programming edit.
The newbie thread is a joke. That's the laziest excuse for a resolution to this issue. I mean really.
You could also ban certain keywords from being postable in the head line. For example , bitcoins. , $. And the names of the bitcoin companies who are spamming. Again. An easy php edit.
Yes, your last suggestion is something I suggested too and it seems like the easiest fix. Just prevent virewex (and all variations of it) from being posted/pm'd and there you have it, spam killed.
-
I am not sure on the technical side how you go about blocking keywords and such. And I agree the newbie section has only made spammers out of everyone wanting to rejoin the community as a whole.
How about this. Allow any user to block posts by a certain person. That shouldn't be that hard right? Then you don't have to wade thru pages of spam.
( now the spammer can spam 50 times in newbie and get back in the main threads I realize but I have an idea for that )
Since there is a newbie thread which isn't a terrible idea, you could also have a sub thread off of the newbies for 50+ posters, Where they post in one specific thread and request full membership status.
Then one mod or even two could nightly go into that thread and approve the full members. (now even if say 100 a day applied, it still is do'able) Thus blocking any/most spammers from coming into the main area's.
So with the combination of the 2 I think spam would be dealt a big blow, and not in the good way. And it seems like it might not be all that difficult to implement. Thoughts?
-
I don't know how often mod's are online on the forum, but I know personally I am on here at least an hour a night, and most of the time more. (resulting from no job, no relationship, and boredom).
If needed I would even mod that one thread to help out if the load of new members was to much.
-
one of the best ways would be to ban certain keywords and all variations. i'm not an expert on this sort of thing but I don't feel like it would be too hard to do.
another solution is to promote more folks to moderator that can clean the place up. if there were always at least 1 mod on every couple hours, the spam would be pretty clear. i know having at least 1 mod regularly can be a challenge, though. there are many good candidates from what i've seen!
another solution i thought of would be to minimize how many posts/threads you can do in a certain period of time. for example, with the newbie forum the spammers make 50 threads to gain access to the other sections. if you limited this to 1 thread an hour or something, the spammers would most likely be banned before they could ever get close to 50 posts. this could be an inconvenience for those who are not spammers, but really.. who makes more than 1 thread an hour in the newbie section?? the same concept could apply to posts, although somebody would have to figure out what a good number/time would be for that as that is a tad more tricky than threads per hour.
just a few that i believe would do well. thanks for the opportunity, muska. i think we are all sick of the spam by now. it's just horrible.
-
lol banning keywords? That suggestion is horrible.
How would a newbie ask "How do I buy bitcoins with $" Or how would the ask if "Is btkoin.com a scam?" if they are all banned?
The newbie section is doing its job at the moment. I'm sure the staff are working on a better solution.
-
The best idea for stopping the spam is making friends with someone who has access to a botnet and is willing to point it at the scam-websites.
As for what can be done on the forums... Newbie-forum already did that. Yes, all the spamming might be impacting server performance but the problem is... WE CAN'T STOP THAT. This is tor. IP-addresses are meaningless. All connections are treated, as far as I understand it, as localhost connections. Everything done to make life harder for the spammers will also make life harder for newbies, no matter what.
Muskabuzz, the best solution has already been implemented. The newbie forum IS the best solution. Other than targeting and attacking the websites or paypal accounts of the spammers, there is nothing left to do. Also, I suggest everyone pretend to go through checkout and report it as a scam.
I suggest you offer the 1/2oz to Nomad Bloodbath, since he's the only member of the moderator-team that I think would accept it. I know the admins wouldn't, even if only for their own protection. :)
Or an alternative suggestion: 20 people with $100 each buy whatever $100 listing for bitcoins that fucker offers then dispute the transaction 24 hours later. Since that fucker won't be delivering the coins either way, dispute it by mentioning that you were attempting to buy bitcoins. Paypal HATES bitcoins and will refund any transaction done for them as well as shut down the account "selling bitcoins"... though in this case, it's just stealing money.
Point is: Go after the website or the paypal account, not the spammer. All that can be done here has been done.
-
I say the best (and simplest) way is to limit the number of new threads any account can make. There is zero legitimate reason, at least that I can think of, for anyone to create multiple new threads in a single day.
So if the forum software allows this: make it so accounts can't create more than 2 new threads in any 24 hour period. This would effectively castrate the spammers.
This would still leave a potential problem of existant threads being spammed - in which case I suggest that new accounts not be allowed to make more than 4 additional posts in the 24 hours that follow their first post. Once 5 posts have been made and 24 hours has passed, they can post like normal.
This would be preferable to the current (ineffective) method of restricting newbies to the Newbie Forum for the first 50 posts - especially since the first 50 posts can all be spam and done in a matter of minutes before running amok on the rest of the forums. The fact that anyone can make hundreds of posts with no time-delay renders the Newbie Forum 100% useless for preventing spam.
-
I say the best (and simplest) way is to limit the number of new threads any account can make. There is zero legitimate reason, at least that I can think of, for anyone to create multiple new threads in a single day.
So if the forum software allows this: make it so accounts can't create more than 2 new threads in any 24 hour period. This would effectively castrate the spammers.
This would still leave a potential problem of existant threads being spammed - in which case I suggest that new accounts not be allowed to make more than 4 additional posts in the 24 hours that follow their first post. Once 5 posts have been made and 24 hours has passed, they can post like normal.
This would be preferable to the current (ineffective) method of restricting newbies to the Newbie Forum for the first 50 posts - especially since the first 50 posts can all be spam and done in a matter of minutes before running amok on the rest of the forums. The fact that anyone can make hundreds of posts with no time-delay renders the Newbie Forum 100% useless for preventing spam.
Incorrect. It is ABSOLUTELY effective, even if it isn't perfect. It can be circumvented with effort but that is not the same thing as "completely 100% worthless".
-
I have a solution which has been tested. We DDOS's/DOS'd the bitcointalks servers. If you wish to help, or organize another raid, i believe we can use the same method Tessellated was using at the time to bring them down, we just need concurrent attacks. If you wish to participate, please head here:
For Tess's donation thread. He is currently not running the attack as it has become ineffective, however if you want to know how to make it effective ask here or in the next link
http://dkn255hz262ypmii.onion/index.php?topic=109831.0
Official scammer DDOS thread:
http://dkn255hz262ypmii.onion/index.php?topic=109654.0
-
thank you participants, to characterize what hasn't been shot down so far:
- limit posts/minute
qs: by poster? content?
- more moderators
what is the current level of moderation? are volunteers needed? paid moderators?
- user blocking
what options exist on the simple machines platform?
- sabotage operations against spammers
ethics and practicalities?
what else dear people?
-
With any method of blocking spammmers the problem your going to have is that a spammer is ALWAYS going to be able to fulfill the criteria a genuine human being is able to, so stopping it may not be the answer.
Firstly, something I would have thought would already be in operation would be someway to identify when identical text is repeated used. As it would be simple to have simply one letter difference possibly an 80%+ match would be enough for them all to dissappear as long as they were from the same user since its very unlikely im going to use more than 90% of the same text more than twice (talking headers here) although I can see that becoming quickly defunct when the spammers simply find a way to make the content appear different.
In terms of a permenant solution IMO the forum needs to become self sustaining in terms of spam removal at least. Every user above say 100 posts or 10+ karma would have a flag as spam button. Obviously theres too much risk of censorship or abuse by people trying to hinder another user, so even saying for example that if a post is flagged a hundred times as spam means it should automatically dissapear might not be the best solution. Then one of two things would happen. Moderators then get a concise list of "accused spam" so that when they do get chance to log on they can quickly sift through the real spam all in one page making the job a lot less work OR users (100+ posts) would be able to access a sub forum where all accused spam (possibly 10+ spam accusations) was cloned (not moved the original post would still remain at this point). Here the user would be put to a kangaroo court and a system of voting where if more than 95% of people (100+) agree it is spam the user is deleted. Hero members should potentially get a veto at this point to save any unpopular users from being deleted for simply voicing an unpopular opinions.
What im saying may be useless, impractical or flawed but I think the general direction should be to aim to either streamline the work mods have to do or make the forum virtually self sufficient using voting means heavily weighted towards protecting unpopluar users from abuse ie 95%+ to get removed along with the veto any hero member would wield
-
Seeing as how this spam is caused simply by some script sending http requests, how about one of the mods runs a script of their own to scrape the new posts page every x minutes and delete spam posts/ban accounts? It's not like any legitimate users are going to be swept up in this. After all, we don't see too many non-spam posts with "WWW.VIRWEX.COM" written in capital Latin characters from a Chinese font encoding table, or buyers excited to review their purchases making threads with "no track,hiden trade" in the title. This is a pretty quick and dirty solution, but seeing as SR are unwilling to implement any of the easy fixes available to them from the administrative end, it seems like this is our best shot to actually clean up this place. Writing a script to handle this would be very simple. Surely there's at least one mod on staff here who knows enough to do so.
-
Ok well the way i see it is this. We'r never going to be able to stop spammers accessing the site in some way or another but we can make it increasingly difficult for them to return once they have.
I would suiggest that The admins keep a blacklist the same as the vendors have, That spammers get put into, anyone who sees someone spamming add them in here and they are blacklisted, i've read things about not being able to make new accounts after your on the list, but not 100% sure on this because of the whole tor anonymity thing i thought your IP was disguised so not sure how they would blacklist you, though i DO know there is a way.
Maybe new members are allowed only so many posts per minute?
SR implements a feature that recognizes words or phrases, E.g. Anyone advertising "Virwox 10BTC =$129.99" would be flagged up by the program and then added to the blacklist.
Could have a certain amount of posts per minute although i dont think that this would stop the spam and would most probably limit genuine buyers with delays.
Admins pay a hacker to drop the sites that spam here. ::)
-
I thought sure I would have won this here bounty. Darn.
-
thank you participants, we shall now ask for a final call on ideas, please post them by st patricks day.
a couple of interesting qs that have come up:
programmatic changes - many good ideas here but still little consideration of positive measures like karma and upvoting.
the role of admins; though so many solutions rest with them, the nature of forum administration here is still quite unknown. the call for rewarding volunteer admins is surely wise but also raises the question of why professionals aren't doing this work given the clear financial stakes. or is this already happening?
-
To fix the problem you must work within the fundamental restrictions imposed by anonymous access. This is a hidden service accessed via Tor, so it is not possible to block or prevent spammers (or anyone else) from signing up and creating as many accounts as they wish. There's no IP address to ban and no credentials to check.
THE SPAMMERS WILL NEVER BE STOPPED unless some fundamental restriction is placed on the number of posts an account may create within a given period of time. If accounts are able to create 100 threads in 20 minutes, then this is exactly what the spammers will do . As it is now, the only posing limit is whatever is imposed by the speed of the Tor connection. The 50-post rule might have momentarily interrupted the spammers for a day until they simply changed their script to post the first 50 posts messages to the Newbie forums and flood the rest of the forums. All the newbie forum does is allow spammers to blend right in with 'normal' users who "spam to 50" to get out of that shithole.
So the only remotely effective way to limit spam is to limit the number of posts or threads an account can create. For example I think if all accounts had a 1-hour wating period between creating new threads and a 5-minute waiting period between posting replies to threads, that would DRASTICALLY reduce the amount of spam without interfering with regular posting. This way not much spam could be created in the time before a moderator can react, close the account and begins deleting all the spam. Who besides a spammer (or an idiot) would have any reason to post more than 1 reply every 5 minutes and create 1 new thread every hour?
Alternatively the forum might try to implement some sort of script that would automatically lock an account if it makes identical posts, but there are just too many ways that could be circumvented with automated scripts that change a few letters. The only way to circumvent a posting time-limit would be for the spammers to use several accounts and loginAccount1-post1Spam-logoutAccount1-loginAccount2-post1Spam-logoutAccount2-loginAccount3-post1Spam-logoutAccount3-loginAccount4-post1Spam-logoutAccount4... etc. But that would be much slower (especially over Tor), and I think it might even be possible to block a user from logging in under different accounts during the same session.
Bottom line - time limits on posting. That's the simple answer that won't create more headaches for mods, who I am 99.99% sure are unpaid volunteers.
-
I was also thinking, You could have a limit on negative votes, And everytime someone gets below say 10 negative's they are banned from the site, and have to check back in a day or 2 by which time an admin will either re-allow them (say for reasons such as they were hacked or some asshole just decided to neg all their comments) Or permanently leave them on the banned list if the comments were clearly spam.
Make the site harder to find? The community is already thriving and im sure people will still find it, You might be able to stop a certain percentage of idiots who dont even use PGP, Spammers, etc etc etc .
-
Many thanks kind and learned participants.
If you haven't submitted your own remarkable idea yet you have till midnight tomorrow, Dublin time.
Muskabuzz
-
I think the answer lies in time. There needs to be a way to track active time on the forums. A cumulative active time would allow you to post anywhere in the forums. Until that time is reached there should be child threads that are affiliated with each unlocked thread. Or just the noob board as it is now. The way time is kept should be something like time of initial query plus 1 minute or something like that. That would be assuming that each query on the site involves some sort of time invested. It also needs to be kept in real time. 30 posts in 30 seconds doesn't equal half an hour. It equals 1 min 30 sec. Obviously what amount of time is associated with what action is up for discussion. My numbers are just for explanation. There should then be another quota alongside the 50 posts that needs to be met to access all areas of the forum. Something like 6 hours active as well as 50 posts. I've seen other forums that are run by a similar system so I don't think it would be that hard to set up. However, I certainly don't have that knowledge so I apologize if I'm wrong in saying that. 50 post can be easily achieved without investing much time. This way forcing time to be invested will hopefully weed out most of the trolls as well as spammers.
-
thank you this thread is open but the contest is now over. the 1st stated determination of a winner is implementation/recognition from SR administration; this encapsulates a lot since they have the most to gain and are in an excellent position to determine feasibility.
if a representative would chime in we can call it right away otherwise we can structure a poll to see who gets the Fleetwood.
to either end we shall return within a week,
Muskabuzz
-
Crossing fingers on this one. Was looking at your listings earlier muska, look amazing.
But GL to all. Someone is in for some goodness!
-
Fingers Crossed here, Il keep my eye on the forum, If i win be sure to let me know either on here or via the road lol, imagine winning and then you forget to check the thread and never claimed your prize O.o .
GL everyone.
-
I don't know why you would want to put a time limit on suggestions to limit spam. If the problem is solved, then yes, there's no use commenting on a non existent problem.
I think the spammers want all the attention that they can get. Maybe they wouldn't spam this site if they got enough unwanted attention, like repeated DDOS attacks that keep their money making site inassessable. Seems that they would move to 'greener' pastures. If they got massive retaliation from the site that they are spamming-that is the only way it would work.
As has been mentioned before a programmer could figure out a way to get rid of most of the continuing EXACT posts.
Also, not that this has anything to do with the solution to spam, I've thought that LE could easily do a DDOS to our site, maybe the people who are responsible (I have no reason to doubt that they already have) 'computer-wise' for this site can think of a way to expand the technology to stay ahead of LE, and spammers. It would be neat to think that 'dopers' were responsible for extending the availability of anonymity for the general public welfare. Sort of like the way Linux has grown and improved. Of course that's the reason we have Tor and this site already. I think in the long run, that this entire Tor/bitcoin is going to be extremely worrying to governments. Then again, maybe we want to be off that 'screen'. I think it would take some resources to shut down the Tor network, governments DO have those resources.
Maybe the SR community could fabricate some solution to the spam problem that would involve many small efforts by individuals, kind of a 'nano' approach that a spammer could not figure out a way around. Maybe something to do with reputations and a web of trust that would ensure that the community would be behind these efforts. I know I wouldn't mind contributing some small amount of BTC if I knew it was really doing some good, and the person(s) involved weren't just making money and pretending to work. I mean REAL results would make it easy to contribute small amounts of contributions into sums of money that would make a difference.
Just some thoughts I had. It's really irritating to see about a hundred exact posts from a money grubbing spammer that has absolutely no problem with compromising OUR site.
-
I don't know why you would want to put a time limit on suggestions to limit spam. If the problem is solved, then yes, there's no use commenting on a non existent problem.
I think the spammers want all the attention that they can get. Maybe they wouldn't spam this site if they got enough unwanted attention, like repeated DDOS attacks that keep their money making site inassessable. Seems that they would move to 'greener' pastures. If they got massive retaliation from the site that they are spamming-that is the only way it would work.
As has been mentioned before a programmer could figure out a way to get rid of most of the continuing EXACT posts.
Also, not that this has anything to do with the solution to spam, I've thought that LE could easily do a DDOS to our site, maybe the people who are responsible (I have no reason to doubt that they already have) 'computer-wise' for this site can think of a way to expand the technology to stay ahead of LE, and spammers. It would be neat to think that 'dopers' were responsible for extending the availability of anonymity for the general public welfare. Sort of like the way Linux has grown and improved. Of course that's the reason we have Tor and this site already. I think in the long run, that this entire Tor/bitcoin is going to be extremely worrying to governments. Then again, maybe we want to be off that 'screen'. I think it would take some resources to shut down the Tor network, governments DO have those resources.
Maybe the SR community could fabricate some solution to the spam problem that would involve many small efforts by individuals, kind of a 'nano' approach that a spammer could not figure out a way around. Maybe something to do with reputations and a web of trust that would ensure that the community would be behind these efforts. I know I wouldn't mind contributing some small amount of BTC if I knew it was really doing some good, and the person(s) involved weren't just making money and pretending to work. I mean REAL results would make it easy to contribute small amounts of contributions into sums of money that would make a difference.
Just some thoughts I had. It's really irritating to see about a hundred exact posts from a money grubbing spammer that has absolutely no problem with compromising OUR site.
There is no limit on suggestions to limit spam, Just the bounty he is offering, which is up to him as it's his product. The only person i have seen that has offered any such reward so far.
it was the united states naval department that invented Tor.
Yes they are worried and good suggestion, However this would probably strongly limit the amount of new users, which seeing as the site relies on business,would be a problem.
-
Does this characterizations of the submissions appear correct to everyone?
- limit new threads /minute
- limit posts/minute
- tougher captchas
- keyword filtering
- repeated text filtering
- user controlled blocking
- user voting
- more moderators
- paid professional moderators
- admin operated parsing and filtering scripts
- user blocking
- networks sabotage operations against spammers
- business sabotage against spammers
Though submissions are closed (we have to give the prize sometime) we can have another round if a stroke of genius appears here.
Thanks again for the neurons spent.
Muskabuzz
-
Does this characterizations of the submissions appear correct to everyone?
- limit new threads /minute
- limit posts/minute
- tougher captchas
- keyword filtering
- repeated text filtering
- user controlled blocking
- user voting
- more moderators
- paid professional moderators
- admin operated parsing and filtering scripts
- user blocking
- networks sabotage operations against spammers
- business sabotage against spammers
Though submissions are closed (we have to give the prize sometime) we can have another round if a stroke of genius appears here.
Thanks again for the neurons spent.
Muskabuzz
Sounds about right mate =)
-
We have posted the poll at http://dkn255hz262ypmii.onion/index.php?topic=139514.0
Good luck and thank you.
Muskabuzz
-
We have posted the poll at http://dkn255hz262ypmii.onion/index.php?topic=139514.0
Good luck and thank you.
Muskabuzz
I know I'm too late to win the prize (and I'm not really in need of a 1/2 oz anyways) but here's an idea I just started in the Newbie forum. What if we keep a petition where everyone who signs is pledging to never use the spammers company (www.bitswing.com) and will tell everyone we know not to use them as well. Since the reason they are here spamming is to get new customers, hopefully if enough people sign, their advertising will lose them customers, and they will go away. Let's try that out. I'll start a petition now and post it.
-
scratch that idea. Scout just informed me on the newbie forum post that it wouldn't work because the spammers never read the posts because they are robots. I dunno, I would have thought there would be at least a few forward-thinking, inquisitive robots out there who are interested in furthering their educations by reading the posts in the forums. But I guess I was optimistic and scout is probably right ;)
-
Hi all,
muskabuzz recently awarded this bounty to the mods and admins for the work we have done in keeping the forums spam-free; as we obviously could not accept any of his revered weed for this, he provided us with a BTC bounty instead.
My portion is being donated on muskabuzz's behalf to everyone that contributed to this thread.
My portion of the bounty amounts to 0.74 BTC, so splitting that up between 13 of you, 0.05692307 BTC will be sent to each member on the list below:
blurr22
Skeezer
rosannebar
pinkkush
danknugsdun (sent)
SorryMario
dbz4u
Revolutionista
fivesigma
HeatFireFlame (sent)
robotrippin
lokiju
JackBlue (sent)
BlarghRawr is unfortunately no longer available, so I cannot send anything to them.
If your username is on the list above, please PM me your Silk Road handle and I'll transfer the BTC to you over on the main site. It might take me a while to get around to sending it as I'm quite busy but I'll take care of it when I get a chance.
Thanks again to muskabuzz for starting this thread to get ideas to fight spam here on the forums, and for putting up a most generous reward! :)
Libertas
-
Nothing to offer here. I just wanted to say how much I enjoy the "nail a WANTED poster on the wall of the saloon" aspect of this, here.
I'm off to hunt critters.
-
libertas, thank you for all your help with this; your selflessness is the best kind of leadership this community can aspire to.
much thanks to everyone that participated, you have shown everyone that ideas can quickly become important actions on our SR.
-
I've seen some good implemented, custom made spam protection in different forums, so I'll throw in some ideas:
For user under 50 posts, they should do this before posting:
(yes, this will make reaching 50 posts even more annoying)
1) Captcha
2) additionally to the captcha, implement a random question that needs to be answered in words, like "what is the color of the sky at night", answer would be "black". Provide a big fucking huge lists with simple questions and answers, make the list editable by the mods. I'm sure the mods wouldn't mind adding a few new questions every other day ;-) Or maybe even forum users could volunteer for this...
3) Add another question where you have to chose the answer from a 3x3 matrix of pictures. Make the pictures as low res as possible to make automatic OCR as hard as possible. Example question: Select the apple from the 9 pictures, display 9 different fruits with a round shape, like oranges, citrus, whatever, and of course the answer, an apple.
This would need customization of the "Post thread/reply" page directly in code. I'm sure the SR team has one or two good coders ;-)
Cheers!
zookaa
-
I was thinking of starting to hire ddos on the spammer sites any time they start posting spam here. Granted it wouldn't stop the spam, at least not at first, but if the message/word gets out that if you spam the SR forums, your site will get ddos'd, that might stop them. Because the spammer scammer isn't going to make any money while their site is inaccessible. Many of the spammer/scammer sites I'm going to guess are on cheap hosting that wouldn't take much to ddos. (Would only consider it for clearnet sites though, I don't want tor congested just like everyone else).