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goldshare715 wrote:thank you!

Hah, brave little spamdroid here.

goldshare715 wrote:thank you!

There is a reason they are thanking you... by purging/deleting the banned bot names, this allows those names to be used again. When you delete an account name, that name no longer exists, thus is no longer banned, thus can be used again. Yes, there are e-mail, IP, and other methods of bans that could prevent them from registering, but the names can be used again. For those that remember the persistent troll, then you also know how easy it is to get new, non-banned e-mail's and IP's.

Now will this mean a flooding of bots using unbanned names? Who knows, but they were not previously purged/deleted for a very good reason.

It's not hard to think up non-banned usernames, either. In fact that's easier than getting an unbanned email or IP.

They weren't deleted before because Moderators don't have the ability to delete profiles, only ban. Admins can delete, but there weren't active Admins in the past. There also wasn't a way to prune by occupation, only join date or post count, which would delete a lot of real accounts if used.

I don't foresee the purge resulting in more spam bots. Captcha keeps the non-human bots out already.

Jeff wrote:

goldshare715 wrote:thank you!

There is a reason they are thanking you... by purging/deleting the banned bot names, this allows those names to be used again. When you delete an account name, that name no longer exists, thus is no longer banned, thus can be used again. Yes, there are e-mail, IP, and other methods of bans that could prevent them from registering, but the names can be used again. For those that remember the persistent troll, then you also know how easy it is to get new, non-banned e-mail's and IP's.

Now will this mean a flooding of bots using unbanned names? Who knows, but they were not previously purged/deleted for a very good reason.

I have to agree with Jeff. Of course, there's no hinder for bots to appear with new names but, if once out is always out, and people seem to have an elephant's memory about names, required new names, these nasty bits of human under-kind have at least the obligation to think of something new. Not that it would necessarily mean a true effort... vicious are vicious.

I'd say, call the Cavalry! Don't have high thoughts of disturbers.

If it is not broke, do not try to fix it. The reason people say that, is because that is how things end up becoming broken.

Especially when not trying to fix it, will not hurt anything, and has the potential benefit of preventing the use of those names again.

...but this gives me an idea.

I can't help but think that the thousands of spambot profiles just sitting around are causing database bloat. It's currently 1.5GB in size.

The prune would also give us a more accurate number of real members of the forum (because we don't have 16k).

Although we also have inactive members who contribute to that number, as well...

Any action on the database that is Dave approved has my blessing. It couldn't hurt, provided it's done safely so as not to affect true user accounts. I am just wondering what the concern is with names, given that our anti-bot measures are greatly improved? It's unlikely we'll get the same random selection of numbers and letters as before since our security question and CAPTCHA have already reduced computer-generated spambots in their entirety. The majority of our spambots had such names. (Actually, it'd be impressive to recreate those, given the great randomness of the combinations! )

There were actually a couple of cool names that some people spammers used that would be nice to drop back into the selection pool for new users.

As a general rule, I have first dibs on all possible names on the site. I'm just letting you all use the ones I don't.

I'm thinking just to avoid any slight possibility of my account getting deleted, I'm going to remove all of the stuff in my occupation.

Avron the S'wit wrote:Although we also have inactive members who contribute to that number, as well...

A smart point. Arises the question, when will names run out? Practically impossible to blockade bots and other nuisance, since the combination of numbers and letters is ~infinite. If they can break in Pentagon, they can certainly do it here. Our best hope is to cherish the wish of alertness of members.

Musicman247 wrote:I can't help but think that the thousands of spambot profiles just sitting around are causing database bloat. It's currently 1.5GB in size.

The 1.5GB isn't very much. On the other hand, you make me think about blocking a new members name just because it was used by a bot or other non-wanted earlier.

Not sure.

Musicman247 wrote:There were actually a couple of cool names that some people spammers used that would be nice to drop back into the selection pool for new users.

I hate it when people always take the cooler names

and probably less birthdays occurring

Andere wrote:

Avron the S'wit wrote:Although we also have inactive members who contribute to that number, as well...

A smart point. Arises the question, when will names run out? Practically impossible to blockade bots and other nuisance, since the combination of numbers and letters is ~infinite. If they can break in Pentagon, they can certainly do it here. Our best hope is to cherish the wish of alertness of members.

Indeed. People are hardly eternal, but names are. I don't think names ever "run out" in the practical sense around here, but memories sure do live on.

Getting an accurate number of users is always going to be impossible, as we never touch inactive accounts, so it can never be used as a reason for purging. If Dave says it's okay to get rid of known users who aren't going to be doing anything, then that's another thing. Is it necessary? At the moment, probably not, and it won't get all spambots, either, since only the recent team members started putting in "Spambot" in the occupation field.

Jun Satou wrote:I hate it when people always take the cooler names

The coolness of names is only restricted to your own creativity, young grasshopper.

Why bother deleting these accounts? They're unlikely to be usernames that any legitimate user would want, and if the name is no longer registered the spambot may return and re-register.

As Avron said, most of the not profiles that will be deleted are automated programs that created usernames with random letters and numbers. Those same programs will not work with our current Captcha anti-spam measures.

The reason for the cleanup is just that - to clean up the database.

Dave has okayed this, so he must see the value in it.

To be frank, I suggest we delete the creators of these bots. Heh.

Did a dry run of the prune that just searched for the profiles without deleting them. I only checked a few variations, but the numbers were a bit surprising.

There are 2,821 users with Spambot as their Occupation

There are 144 users with Spamdroid as their Occupation

There are 234 users with Spåmböt at their Occupation

Almost seems like there would be more.

You have to remember that it has only been the more recent mod teams that have marked Spambots as such. Previous teams just banned them.

Also, nearly 19% of all profiles seems like a pretty large number to me.

A lot of people just create an account and never use it. But that number makes perfect sense with a little math. Look at the Report Potential Spambots Thread, and you'll see it has 128 pages. One page only has one post, while the others all have 25. 127 * 25 is 3175, plus one is 3176. The number Musicman provided is equal to 3199. Since a number of posts there are just confirmations, while some report multiple spammers, and sometimes mods get to it first, that number is a bit skewed, but it is EXTREMELY close to reasonable estimates based on that thread.

May I ask what time zone this is taking place in?

I'm in the Central Standard Time Zone in the US.

Alright, same as mine. Thanks.

Prune aborted. Sorry folks.