Lots of bots/spammers trying to get in at the moment

[gregf]

Your right about this Glen.

Every file name your browser (lets say) sees is logged on the corporate server.

Something like this :
glen : /www.petshopboys-forum.com/neil.gif
glen : /www.petshopboys-forum.com/chris.jpeg
glen : /www.petshopboys-forum.com/glen.gif
glen : /www.petshopboys-forum.com/forum2/post122345.txt
glen : /www.petshopboys-forum.com/neil.gif
glen : /www.petshopboys-forum.com/neil.jpeg

So when people at work surf porno all day (and they do), the IT staff are sitting
around giggling about which staff are visiting necrophilia.com and donkeyfriends.com.

What you want to do is possible but it's critical to understand there are two types of "wireless".

"Wi-Fi" is a short range networking connection. It connects you to a nearby WiFi router that
connects to the net. This is like in coffee shops, and some work places will have it.

3G Broadband is a wireless internet connection for (usually) laptops. It is a little card/key
that plugs in to the side of your laptop. It is doing the same thing as a cable modem :
it connects you over the phone carrier to the net.

If you get a 3G connector for your laptop, you will be ok. But, understand that will be $20,$30,$50
per month just like a normal broadband connection. Also if your laptop also has a WiFi interface,
you would have to disable the WiFi while at work. Not hard, in control panel, or just leave off always.
This is because the computer will takes the fastest path to the network. So if the WiFi is faster
than the 3G, it will go thru the company Wi-Fi network (if they have it). Often the IT staff will have
one for their own use.

So, yes, but you need to pay for another broadband connection for the laptop and disable WiFi.

And even so your ISP always sees the same type of list of file names above.
So never visit anywhere bad on your own ISP account.

HTH

-greg.

[glennjridge]

AYE CARAMBA.
thanks for the heads up.
my web travels arent bad per se, my surfing habits are more along the lines of a 12 year old teen girl.

I'd rather them think I was a badass into necrophilia then the fact I spend about 2 hours on roadfood.com reading restaurant reviews.

[gregf]

I think employers should be warning employees about this.

But often the IT staff just keep quiet about it,
.. because managers are surfing too,
.. and so the managers dont know to send out a warning.

[StevePSB]

There was a perfect example. User cjawcrusher512 registered before I added the location and date of birth requirement, and also before I added gmail to the banned list.

Guess what? The user didn't supply location or DOB and registered with a gmail e-mail account and spammed the forum. Without the requirements we currently have they'd be impossible to spot and would take ten times more work to fix after they'd been on the forum and spammed it.

I have dealt with this particular user, but if not for these rules there'd have been probably 30 spammers got in in the last fortnight - that's how many I've been able to spot and weed out. Heaven knows how many more again there'd have been without the free e-mail accounts ban. It isn't nice to have to prevent these e-mail addresses from registering, but it'd be chaos without it.

As it happens, we ran a questions add on for new registrations with the old system software (phpbb2) and that stopped spammers and auto registration dead in their tracks, so we the dropped location/DOB requirement and the free e-mail accounts ban. All was fantastic, but Steffen says there is no equivalent for phpbb3.


StevePSB

[Postscript]

If you've got an internet connection of your own then you should have an e-mail address from your own ISP.

First of all, R-E-S-P-E-C-T Steve for what you do.

But,

No. There are huge advantages to Gmail over ISP mail addresses.

1. Your ISP will provide an email which uses POP. This allows you to use an email program like Thunderbird or (cough) Outlook.
There is a more advanced protocol called IMAP, mostly only in corporate email systems.
Yahoo will give you POP if you pay for it.
Gmail will give you POP for free and recently started giving IMAP for free.
I can check/use all my gmail accounts from home or iPhone, because of IMAP. Perfect synchronisation.

2. Many ISP mail boxes are 5 or 10 or 20 Megabytes. If you send them a song or two, their inbox is filled
and they ring up and abuse you because they didn't get the email from aunty Joan because of you.
Gmail inbox is several Gigabytes. You can send them 100 songs or photos and still stay friends.

3. If you use ISP email address and change providers, you have to notify everyone of the changed address.
If it is Gmail Etc (my word of the week), you keep the same email address for life. A pain for PayPal Etc.

4. Gmail also gives you Google calendar+contacts which can sync with iPhone calendar+contacts.

5. Don't use work email address for private use for many reasons. Especially "3".

I have been using Gmail for years and never had a security problem or spam problem.

-Greg
25 years in IT.

Google should pay you for advertising. lol

[StevePSB]

Deleted 37 new spam registrations since the start of the month so far!


StevePSB

[Vince]

Spam etc.

[Fugitive1979]

Deleted 37 new spam registrations since the start of the month so far!


StevePSB

Is that spam, spam, spam, spam, spam, or spam, spam, spam, spam, spam, spam - without the spam?

[glennjridge]

I hate spam as much the next guy, but as a guy that really only knows a tad above computer basics I am always intrigued by people who have the know how to use these bots and programs.

they are almost like outlaws in the wild west or somethin. they hardly ever get caught and some of these programs are really smart. you go to a website for shoes, and next thing you know your mailbox is full of spam regarding shoes. these things must compile what you view according to your cookies and they target you.

its a sort of interesting little unseen sub world these guys exist in.I'd like to see a dateline NBC show on what and how these guys operate. they are so faceless.

[StevePSB]

I deleted in total 77 bot registrations in February.

Hopefully in the near future we will have a phpBB 3.0 compatible questions mod to tack onto the server and that should enable us to stop bot registrations in their tracks.


StevePSB