who is...., concerning the recent private spam messages Options

[JackSteel]

Anyone know a muzrinkl ? i got a weird email from this forums from this person but don't even see the name listed in the membership.

[UNDEAD]

myself as well

[Timber]

Yup me to. Me thinks a bot got in.

[Rocket Dog]

Anyone know a muzrinkl ? i got a weird email from this forums from this person but don't even see the name listed in the membership.

Some how our board e-mail is being hijacked. I have now had 2 messages, one was to check out a image and it was a link to adultfinder site.





The latest was from jurdreda, which broght me to a link back to the forum which said "Iwas not allowed to use this function"



Any admins reading this?





This is the e-mail I received, this person joined April 7, 2009. No information filled out on their forum page.





Rocket Dog,

jurdreda has sent you a new personal message entitled "From Administrator".

You can read this personal message by following the link below:

http://www.mobclan.com/forums/upload/index.php?act=Msg&CODE=03&VID=in&MSID=36337



Regards,

The {MOB} Forums team.

http://www.mobclan.com/forums/upload/index.php

[/size]





I smell a new spam approach.



[size="2"]RD

[gen.gomer-pyle]

i also got the same email. i just got another one from jurdreda who even that is.

[Robert]

Sorry for the inconvenience, I've turned off the PM system for normal members as a temporary fix until I can install a more permanent solution.
I've gone in an deleted all the PM's for everyone else.

Rocket Dog is correct about this being the newest spam approach. What's interesting is while it's a nuisance for everyone, it actually a pretty lame an amateurish attempt. A real person signs up, then runs a script which creates a list of all forum members. Then it sends the spam private message to the 1st 10 people on the list ( 10 people/message is the limit ) Then sends it to the next 10 on the list. etc etc.
I call it lame an amateurish because it takes longer for the script to run then it takes an admin to remove all the offending messages. I guess the spammers are getting desperate.

Something interesting I found while investigating the problem. All 3 of the big commercial forums ( VBulletin, IPB and Ultra ) are susceptible to this kind of script. While some of the most popular free open source forums are not. So much for getting what you pay for.

Again, sorry for the inconvenience.

[tom]

i also got the same email. i just got another one from jurdreda who even that is.

I got i to

[tim]

well update to 2.3.6, use a custom field (such as an anti spam field ex: it would say " type in the numbers 1256 to send a message in this field" or captcha, then turn on th pm system.

[Robert]

It's actually a stupid way to fix the problem.
1) It requires every IPB forum on the planet to update to 2.3.6 even though the problem has existed in every version including 2.3.6 until a few days ago. IPB will be laughing all the way to the bank because they are using this as a way to force people to pay for fix even though a normal fix wouldn't require it.
2) The custom field or Captha option is also stupid because the fix shouldn't require extra user input from 99.9999% of users who DON"T use the PM system to flood everyone with spam.
3) Why base a fix on Captha when it was already bypassed a few months ago

They should have simply added the PM system to the same flood control which prevents to many searches or post per minute. Also any reasonable fix for the problem should have included an option to block new members from from sending PM's until a certain condition(s) had been meet according to options set by the forum admin.
Such as......
member for x number of days
x number of post

Any good fix should be invisible to normal users as possible.