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Nevermind.
Post edited April 30, 2023 by foad01
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foad01: It looks like the current spam wave is over after 6 hours.
Nope they are still spamming.
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foad01: It looks like the current spam wave is over after 6 hours.
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Berzerk2k2: Nope they are still spamming.
Yeah. I just noticed. lyza59 is still active.
lyza59 is not active anymore. Nearly 7 hours of spam. Wow!

I think one possible solution to prevent these spam waves is to use a moderation bot which automatically reacts to it.

Edit: The next bot just appeared.
Post edited April 30, 2023 by foad01
That's absurd... good luck GOG staff, you will need it next week.

btw, great to see all of you discussing about that: at least a proper bot detection could already be something, like for purchased games, but I don't know if is a good thing or not to restrict posting/creating topics only to who paid, since a lot of people just come here for the freebies.
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pippo-san: That's absurd... good luck GOG staff, you will need it next week.

btw, great to see all of you discussing about that: at least a proper bot detection could already be something, like for purchased games, but I don't know if is a good thing or not to restrict posting/creating topics only to who paid, since a lot of people just come here for the freebies.
There are also some developers who create a new account to participate in the discussion about their games. Restricting access to only those who paid for a game would also exclude them.
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lupineshadow: Working backwards from the posts in https://www.gog.com/forum/general/spambot_report_thread

Today (right now)
Yesterday
Two days ago
Three days ago
March 17th
March 16th
March 15th
March 13th
March 8th
March 7th
March 6th
February 28th
January 28th
January 25th
...and more

I got bored listing the dates for you just because you are too lazy to look it up yourself. That is not a full list, sometimes the people reporting mass spam events post only a few examples, as it should be obvious to any moderators which users/threads to ban/remove.
Lazy my ass. And why would I bother, I had no reason to, even if I knew where to look.

Anything that is consecutive days is the same SPAM event. And I was going by events not reports.

I also said this year.

So in other words. The following is all the same event ... at least to me ... and it is my perception I was talking about.

Today (right now)
Yesterday
Two days ago
Three days ago

I'll concede that when there is a break for more than 24 hours, then the next lot of spam is another event. So there has been slightly more than the handful I was guessing.

And in my original post, I stated what was based on every day that I come here .. what I saw ... and I was just guessing at the total, which was approximate. It should have been very clear that I was just guessing, based on what I recalled seeing, plus the fact I am not at GOG every minute of the day, nor every day ... so I could certainly miss a few.

And none of that changes the key things I said ... that there would be a lot more spam, constant in fact, if not for the protections already in place ... spam is tricky to deal with.
Post edited April 30, 2023 by Timboli
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arrua: Yes, come one.

One thing is to bypass some little layer of security in a webpage and a whole different thing is to steal credit card numbers.
Since the whole idea of these spam posts IS to steal CC and identity data (and people are inherently stupid enough to fall for it too these days), this is very EASY for scammers to do. It's a crime which feeds itself.

And since I was suggesting to INCREASE the security on the front-end of this website at the account creation point, my argument still holds water.
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Timboli: Okay, give me some dates. Or are you making the mistake of counting each spam post, where I was talking about major spam events, where many occur at once.
I was exaggerating a bit; not hundreds, but definitely far more than you can count with one hand. We're in the middle of yet another one right now, by the way. I only saw this topic because it happened to be right at the top. Not gonna wade through all that spam.

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eric5h5: It's drastically easier if you have real forum software.
You might think that, but I can assure you it isn't really the case.
I assure you it absolutely is the case. I don't know the MyBB software you mentioned, but I do know the others I talked about, and there are many controls to help prevent the spam floods that GOG regularly gets, not to mention controls for easily cleaning spam up in those rare cases where it does get through. Rather than laboriously deleting topics one at a time like the unfortunate GOG mods have to do. The difference is so obvious and clear-cut that I can't imagine what your motivation is for even trying to debate it.
But as they say, sometimes it is better the devil you know.
That's a horrible and worthless excuse for doing nothing. Also you seem obsessed with migrating posts, when it would be more reasonable to just archive the existing forum and start over.
Oh dear, the spamming is still going on.
Is everybody at GOG on vacation or something?
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Enebias: Oh dear, the spamming is still going on.
Is everybody at GOG on vacation or something?
Probably? It's Sunday morning, a long weekend. The spam wave is huge, dealing with it without the right tools must be a neverending nightmare, and there's only so much time you can spend on your work when you're not at work...
Still waiting for the promised solution to this problem after I opened a thread regarding this issue, which was a couple months ago.
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NuffCatnip: Still waiting for the promised solution to this problem after I opened a thread regarding this issue, which was a couple months ago.
It has been going on for years, they probably got hundreds of reports like yours. Still no solution in sight...
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Enebias: Oh dear, the spamming is still going on.
Is everybody at GOG on vacation or something?
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InkPanther: Probably? It's Sunday morning, a long weekend. The spam wave is huge, dealing with it without the right tools must be a neverending nightmare, and there's only so much time you can spend on your work when you're not at work...
Well, true, but keeping the site like this won't do them any good advertising.
Post edited April 30, 2023 by Enebias
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pippo-san: That's absurd... good luck GOG staff, you will need it next week.

btw, great to see all of you discussing about that: at least a proper bot detection could already be something, like for purchased games, but I don't know if is a good thing or not to restrict posting/creating topics only to who paid, since a lot of people just come here for the freebies.
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foad01: There are also some developers who create a new account to participate in the discussion about their games. Restricting access to only those who paid for a game would also exclude them.
An exception can be made with developer accounts. At the end of the day it is gog staff who give developer accounts their special "colors".
Post edited April 30, 2023 by arrua
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NuffCatnip: Still waiting for the promised solution to this problem after I opened a thread regarding this issue, which was a couple months ago.
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Enebias: It has been going on for years, they probably got hundreds of reports like yours. Still no solution in sight...
True, but that was the first time I saw a blue acknowledge the problem. I might be wrong on that though.