06-11-2008, 03:10 AM | #1 |
Da Guy Wut Owns Dis Joint
Join Date: Mar 2007
Location: Texas
Posts: 3,566
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Amusing web crawlers
I was merrily blocking a really nasty spambot from keymachine.de tonight and watching the Yahoo bots crawl around the board when I notice some amusing things.
The Yahoo bots attempt to access the download threads. Since they are not logged in, they can't get to them, of course. That's a good thing since otherwise they would be blowing megabytes of bandwidth on each crawl. That's a really strong reason for all sites to require logins and go the extra mile to block bots from creating accounts. Another bit of amusement was someone from an irresolvable IP address (65.54.154.48) that turned out to be in a Microsoft netblock. I suspect that's a general net portal for employees and a sims fan happened to be surfing the sites at 10:00 PM on a Tuesday night, but still, it's still fun to think that maybe there's a reason why the corporation itself would be interested in the game!
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06-15-2008, 01:20 PM | #2 | |
Reticulated MoonBat
Join Date: Apr 2007
Location: My trusty computer in Issaquah WA, USA.
Posts: 848
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Quote:
On the subject of Bots/etc (of which I know very little) I can't help but notice that- once again- Sun Sims appears to be free of things that seem to run almost rampant on many other sites. I am curious as to why that is? It's obvious from being on Sun Sims that it's possible to be Bot/Troll/etc free, yet it seems to be such a huge issue (especially the "Spam Bots") on other sites. Is it really- in your opinion- massively hard to keep the "Web Trash" off a Web Site, or does it boil down to lack of security blocks and/or lazy Moderators? -ZW
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** Long Live All Wild Canines! ** ** Leader Of The Moon-Bat Revolution! ** |
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06-15-2008, 05:13 PM | #3 |
Goddess for Life
Join Date: Mar 2007
Location: NY State
Posts: 3,303
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The price of freedom is eternal vigilance. Thomas Jefferson
Although Thomas Jefferson never heard of spam, he'd probably agree that's the price of freedom from spam too! Basically, early every day, Greg checks for spammers and blows away their accounts and all their spammy posts with one powerful click. If you leave even one for 24 hours, that spammer comes back and brings all his or her little spammer friends. Boards with inactive administrators and moderators (and spam-friendly settings) quickly vanish into piles of spam. I'm amazed that InSimAdult didn't vanish into spam this spring, but apparently, Kathy got the settings right to keep the spam down, so that the shoestring moderation that was available could handle what did get through. Sadly, all of Orkut (the social networking group) seems to have vanished for all practical purposes -- it's full of Indians, Pakistanis, and Brazilians who have filled up every unguarded group (unfortunately including the Moon Society group) with spam in languages other than English. I can tell it's Spam, because it's got the Hormel trademark on it! The only reason my Orkut account is at all functional is because I refuse all connections which aren't accompanied by a message in English. Now if Ben Franklin was still alive, he'd take the Senate out one night, get 'em drunk, and get an anti-spam law passed the next day!
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A game that horrible Odessa-person introduced me to: http://www.puzzlepirates.com/?affili...163251&lang=en I'm spreading the addiction by corrupting all my friends (and attempting to make in-game money when they try the game). Last edited by Miros1 : 06-15-2008 at 05:22 PM. |
06-15-2008, 08:13 PM | #4 |
Da Guy Wut Owns Dis Joint
Join Date: Mar 2007
Location: Texas
Posts: 3,566
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It's a combination of things:
So instead of lazy, the worst we might say is ignorant or misinformed. Inattentive ought to be on the list, too.
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06-15-2008, 08:16 PM | #5 |
Da Guy Wut Owns Dis Joint
Join Date: Mar 2007
Location: Texas
Posts: 3,566
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Oh, and one more thing that cuts down on spammers and trolls: We don't advertise this site so I'm sure that most of them don't even know it exists!
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06-15-2008, 09:03 PM | #6 |
Goddess for Life
Join Date: Mar 2007
Location: NY State
Posts: 3,303
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Yep, and the ones that find us don't bother telling their spammer buddies after their spam vanishes the first time.
Like I said, leave spam up for any amount of time, and more spammers will follow...
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A game that horrible Odessa-person introduced me to: http://www.puzzlepirates.com/?affili...163251&lang=en I'm spreading the addiction by corrupting all my friends (and attempting to make in-game money when they try the game). |
07-05-2008, 11:52 PM | #7 |
Da Guy Wut Owns Dis Joint
Join Date: Mar 2007
Location: Texas
Posts: 3,566
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The most important thing is to never, never, never click on a spam link. That's how the spammer finds out that he's got a hot one because it reports the IP that the spam is coming from. So if you click on a link to spam from Sun Sims, you've just reported to the spammer that the attack was successful.
(On the other hand, it's been a long time since we've seen a spammer attack on Sun Sims. The lynching committee must be doing its job!) Footnote: Today I blocked ask.com's crawler at 65.214.45.145 because it was using an access method that looked like an attempt to bypass the site's security system. This generated a series of error messages.
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08-03-2008, 02:42 AM | #8 |
Da Guy Wut Owns Dis Joint
Join Date: Mar 2007
Location: Texas
Posts: 3,566
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More amusement: At this moment, there are 14 web crawlers musing about on the board and none of them has generated any warnings; so whatever the problem was, it must be unique to ask.com.
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12-14-2008, 03:23 AM | #9 |
Da Guy Wut Owns Dis Joint
Join Date: Mar 2007
Location: Texas
Posts: 3,566
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Still more amusement: We are blocking access from Limelight Networks in Tempe, Arizona because for several days, bots from their servers have been attempting to read user profiles on this board. I assume it's someone attempting to harvest email addresses for spam.
As best I can tell, Limelight Networks is not a legitimate ISP and none of our members have ever signed on from there, so this should not inconvenience any real Sims fans. If I'm wrong about that, please let me know.
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