Register

Adv. Query

Q&A (3995)

Reviews (153)

Open problems (16)
Meta (425)

Site Statistics

160 submissions , 132 unreviewed
4,169 questions , 1,545 unanswered
5,017 answers , 21,288 comments
1,470 users with positive rep
589 active unimported users
More ...

We are facing spam attacks

137 views

Maybe, some people have noted that we are facing spam attacks since last night

http://www.physicsoverflow.org/13810/blocking-spam-ip-addresses

The spamming from unregistered IPs is getting worse, so I have (temporarily) set the permissions to post questions, answers, and comments to "Registered users", until we find a better solution for these issues.

If this does not help either, might even have to set the permissions to post anything to "Registered users with email address confirmed" ...

asked Apr 7, 2014 in Announcements by Dilaton (4,325 points) [ no revision ]
recategorized Apr 7, 2014 by dimension10

I think I have a better solution, but you'll have to wait, as I have a horrible internet connection since a few days.

commented Apr 7, 2014 by dimension10 (1,955 points) [ no revision ]

Your comment on this question:

To answer, leave an answer instead. Comments are usually for non-answers.
To mask links under text, please type your text, highlight it, and click the "link" button. You can then enter your link URL.
To alert a user, please use the "@" command and remove spaces from the username, example, the user "John Doe" should be pinged as "@JohnDoe", while the user "Johndoe" should be pinged as "@Johndoe". The post author is always automatically pinged (unless you are the post author).
Please consult the FAQ for as to how to format your post.

Live preview (may slow down editor) Preview

Your name to display (optional):

Email me at this address if a comment is added after mine:

Privacy: Your email address will only be used for sending these notifications.

Anti-spam verification:

[captcha placeholder]

To avoid this verification in future, please log in or register.

1 Answer

I have fixed the issues and now let anyone post. The reason for delay is just my poor internet connection and database connect error becoming worse exactly at the moment that I try to save a setting and then they decide to clear all the changes (especially annoying for the "censored words" change).

I have did the following:

Enabled our ReCaptcha plugin; I have registered a new ReCaptcha key which you can see from Admin/Plugins. Admins: The private key should not be revealed to non-admins, please!
Added words used in the spam messages to the list of censored words. Never thought this would be useful! Don't worry, the spam messages used a lot of words in non-English languages (Spanish and Japanese) so I censored those words so anyone who tries to post these words cannot post the message. It is unlikely that users would want to speak in non-English languages here (right?).

But it is to be noted that I do not understand neither of these languages, so I can only hope that I have chosen common words. Anyone who knows these languages are welcome to comment. The spam posts are too messy for me to use google translate on them : (

I am actually rather surprised that we encountered this problem, Q2A uses a pretty impressive (to me) mechanism to stop spam (hidden URL fields).

answered Apr 7, 2014 by dimension10 (1,955 points) [ no revision ]

Your comment on this answer:

To answer, leave an answer instead. Comments are usually for non-answers.
To mask links under text, please type your text, highlight it, and click the "link" button. You can then enter your link URL.
To alert a user, please use the "@" command and remove spaces from the username, example, the user "John Doe" should be pinged as "@JohnDoe", while the user "Johndoe" should be pinged as "@Johndoe". The post author is always automatically pinged (unless you are the post author).
Please consult the FAQ for as to how to format your post.

Live preview (may slow down editor) Preview

Your name to display (optional):

Email me at this address if a comment is added after mine:

Privacy: Your email address will only be used for sending these notifications.

Anti-spam verification:

[captcha placeholder]

To avoid this verification in future, please log in or register.

Your answer

Please use answers only to (at least partly) answer questions. To comment, discuss, or ask for clarification, leave a comment instead.
To mask links under text, please type your text, highlight it, and click the "link" button. You can then enter your link URL.
Please consult the FAQ for as to how to format your post.
This is the answer box; if you want to write a comment instead, please use the 'add comment' button.

Live preview (may slow down editor) Preview

Your name to display (optional):

Email me at this address if my answer is selected or commented on:

Privacy: Your email address will only be used for sending these notifications.

Anti-spam verification:

If you are a human please identify the position of the character covered by the symbol $\varnothing$ in the following word:
p$\hbar$ysicsOverfl$\varnothing$w
Then drag the red bullet below over the corresponding character of our banner. When you drop it there, the bullet changes to green (on slow internet connections after a few seconds).

To avoid this verification in future, please log in or register.

user contributions licensed under cc by-sa 3.0 with attribution required

Your rights

...