Interesting...

[Mr. Widget]

Not sure if this has anything do with the up coming election season, but lately we have been getting hundreds of requests to join the forum from people in Russia. Typically we receive anywhere from 1 to 5 requests to join the forum every day from people around the world. Receiving massive numbers of requests all from one region of the world is very odd. It could be people trying to set up your garden variety commercial spamming operations or something else, but it is certainly very odd.


Widget

[Earl K]

Not sure if this has anything do with the up coming election season, but lately we have been getting hundreds of requests to join the forum from people in Russia. Typically we receive anywhere from 1 to 5 requests to join the forum every day from people around the world. Receiving massive numbers of requests all from one region of the world is very odd. It could be people trying to set up your garden variety commercial spamming operations or something else, but it is certainly very odd.


Widget


My advice?

Lock the doors until December.

Failing that, limit the inclusion of new members to 3 a month per country ( granted this is an arbitrary number plucked from the air ).

You might want to ask John Nebel what he thinks about this all ( he has the most to lose if his address is associated with some sort of cyber attack funneled through his servers ).

Earl

[rusty jefferson]

That is fascinating. I'm going to post the question on a couple of other forums I visit to the moderators.

[Mr. Widget]

Let me know what you find out. If the other forums automate their sign-up process without sophisticated filtering, it is quite possible they wouldn’t even realize this is happening until someone starts spamming or starts posting “unusual” posts.

FWIW: It is still going on here and we are still blocking them.


Widget

[Titanium Dome]

Thanks, Widget , John, Ann, anyone who’s being mindful of these things. You’re doing a better job than our government.

[rusty jefferson]

Sorry, I got distracted.

I posed the question at 2 other forums. 1 Administrator said he's seeing the same thing as you and is blocking the requests.

The other, moved my thread to quarantine as he felt it was too politically motivated, as that forum has a zero tolerance of political talk. His comment was:

"...We don't block requests from Russia. We do block porn spammers, wherever they are from.

And I don't care what's happening with your election, the rule is still "NO POLITICS." So, hi ho, hi ho, it's off to Quarantine we go."

[Mr. Widget]

It really is a terrible thing that our country has become so polarized and we can not have civilized discussions about important issues, but that is the reality we are currently living in. I hope to out live this state of affairs, but right now it is hard to be optimistic about the political landscape.

With that in mind, I do not know if the current bombardment of requests to join our forum has anything to do with politics or if they are attempts at simple commercial opportunism. In light of worldwide current events, the membership bombardment does seam likely to be related to the US political calendar. Regardless of the motivation, it is something that is on going and we will continue to do our best to fend off.


Widget

[SEAWOLF97]

I too cannot discern the motivation behind this .... guess you could let just a couple in , and monitor their actions. :dont-know:

Suspect that it's just a ploy to get "a foot in the door" for a spamming op.

[Mr. Widget]

I too cannot discern the motivation behind this .... guess you could let just a couple in , and monitor their actions. :dont-know:

Suspect that it's just a ploy to get "a foot in the door" for a spamming op.I'm sure that we did inadvertently let a few in initially before the onslaught began. I am not sure though and I don't feel like digging through the logs of recently added new accounts.

It may be a basic spamming operation, but then why are they trying to create hundreds and hundreds of new accounts? I suppose they may have an automated system and it is simply a numbers game, they are hoping that if they populate a given site with hundreds of fake accounts then it is harder for the moderators to police them. I have no idea what is going on, but it is a PITA to keep manually blocking them at this pace. Our automated filtering doesn't take care of this.


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[Robh3606]

Why don't you report the activity to the FBI? Might help them judge the scope of activity on the net. At least tell John and Ann. Especially if it is happening elsewhere. Also the Host not the Forum may be the target as we are hosted and not on our own server.

Rob:)

[rusty jefferson]

...I posed the question at 2 other forums. 1 Administrator said he's seeing the same thing as you and is blocking the requests.

The other, moved my thread to quarantine as he felt it was too politically motivated, as that forum has a zero tolerance of political talk. His comment was:

"...We don't block requests from Russia. We do block porn spammers, wherever they are from.

And I don't care what's happening with your election, the rule is still "NO POLITICS." So, hi ho, hi ho, it's off to Quarantine we go."
So, the forum that ripped me a new one for posing this question just posted this notice on the top of every page of their site.

"In the last week or so there has been a lot of email claiming to be sent from audiocircle.com. These messages seem to originate from RUSSIA. We don't know what's in the messages, just that they are being sent.

If you receive a message claiming to be from audiocircle.com that wants you to click on a link, double-check that the site you land on is actually audiocircle.com before you enter any information. Most messages from audiocircle.com are automated notifications -- if you unexpectedly receive a message that expects you to reply to it and/or the reply address is NOT noreply at audiocircle.com, it is most likely a fake"

[Earl K]

Hi Admins,

There's a fellow ( over at AK ) who would like to join the LHF clan ( + who doesn't appear to be a Ruskie spybot or anything sinister ).

See HERE! (https://www.audiokarma.org/forums/index.php?threads/lansing-heritage-forums-registration-problems.933853/)


:)

PS; I guess I should have mentioned that he has previously tried to register ( but to no avail ).

[Mr. Widget]

Yesterday I deleted several hundred, perhaps over a thousand requests to join the Forum. I am sure a handful were legitimate, but there were so many bogus ones, there was no way we could weed through them.

If someone could reach out to this fellow on AK and have him let us know what his Forum membership name will be, I can keep an eye out for that one and set him up. I would do it, but I am not on AK.


Widget

[Titanium Dome]

Yesterday I deleted several hundred, perhaps over a thousand requests to join the Forum. I am sure a handful were legitimate, but there were so many bogus ones, there was no way we could weed through them.


Widget

Thanks, comrade!


:mona_lisa:

[Mr. Widget]

It may have been a coincidence; but now, post election, the number of forum member requests has returned to a normal level and most appear to be legit.


The Internet... not what was hoped for when Al Gore created it. ;) But so much more than most could have guessed. :applaud::banghead:


Widget

[Robh3606]

Good News!!

Rob :)

[grumpy]

Good ol Albus DumbleGore. A true tech wizard.
Nice that the spooks are on vacation or busy elsewhere.

[JeffW]

And there were a few of the never posting members that were on a lot, like hours a day, that just disappeared post election. I remember a couple that had similar names, maybe joesephemazy and jeffreyemazy, that were always online at the same time - never seen them online since.

Strange stuff.

[rusty jefferson]

Rest up! The mid-terms will be starting shortly, followed, before you know it by....2024. Hmm, seems appropriate.

https://youtu.be/OeaRVeV8DdA