SPAM Wars - Episode 1 - A new hope

[Euler]

In a galaxy a long long time ago, but somehow in the future.....

Thanks to various forum members for finding and highlighting various spam messages on the forum.

Each day when we wake up there are tons of posts waiting for approval on the forum from spammers. We moderate all first posts because of this and this captures 95% of spammers. Also, each day, we get a similar number of messages in support asking for backlinks to sites. Which we always decline.

Not content with not being able to sell a baclink to Bet Angel, we have noticed they are getting cleverer.

We have now noticed AI being used to craft very good looking first questions on the forum. Good enough to pass manual review by the moderators. But not only that, they contain very clever hidden spam links. Sometimes in the main body of the message, but sometimes elsewhere.

We've just spent a chunk of this week reviewing the methods, the spammers and various other aspects of what they are doing. Significant numbers had got through.

We have now completed the review, deleted or deactivated the accounts and put in new counter measures to make it incredibly hard for spammers to succeed.

This shouldn't affect your forum experience. But if it does, be sure to let us know.

Thanks for your existing help in highlighting dodgy messages. You should see far fewer going forward.

[Emtaxx]

Iknow some times I may seem like a bot. But I’m not

[foxwood]

I feel your pain - protecting against SQL injection attacks on plain text was bad enough back in the day but today's rich text and file / image submissions (like this site) are open house on creating attacks.

Wonder what the legal position would be if a hidden bandit link on a forum managed to lead to financial loss for a user / corporate ? One argument is that the site owner is responsible for not taking due care over material published but on the other hand it can be argued that the user should protect themselves.

[tico]

Hi all,
On this subject ,it's interesting to see that the tipsters are still with us. Before the advent of the net it all used to be done through the racing press and mug lists . Then there were the premium rate lines !!!! where you would pay 50p a minute whilst some joker would waffle on endlessly before he actually mentioned the horses name , that had been arrived at by sticking a pin in a race .
Tico

[Fugazi]

Good work

[Euler]

If you want to know how hard our task is now. Hav ea look at this reply to a question on a horse racing thread. It looks completely genuine, but we know it's a spam account and the reply has been generated by AI.

Screenshot 2025-04-19 at 11.54.45.png

[Fugazi]

If you want to know how hard our task is now. Hav ea look at this reply to a question on a horse racing thread. It looks completely genuine, but we know it's a spam account and the reply has been generated by AI.

Screenshot 2025-04-19 at 11.54.45.png

Can't you just ask on sign up: What is the meaning of life?

Of course eventually they will adapt to this. But can rotate abstract questions times to time

[ShaunWhite]

2FA via Google Authentication? Everyone probably has it anyway for their Betfair logon.

phpBB doesn't support it otb but there's extentions available.

Or if you want to leave it more open to help generate sales then an Image-based CAPTCHA?

[Euler]

2FA via Google Authentication? Everyone probably has it anyway for their Betfair logon.

phpBB doesn't support it otb but there's extentions available.

Or if you want to leave it more open to help generate sales then an Image-based CAPTCHA?

We ask questions and use CAPTCHA technology so there must be exploits on both. Or people are so keen they are registering manually.

I think we have about the right balance at the moment as we are catching them.