C-Brats country block now in place

Da Nag

Da Nag

Administrator
Staff member
Update: The block described below has been removed. See here for details.

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This isn't the typical "That's Life" post, but I didn't want this in 100% public view.

Due to a huge influx of spammers in the last 24 hours, there is now a country block in place at the C-Brats. It's not perfect, as determined spammers can always find a way - but this latest salvo on our end will likely prevent the majority of the problems we've seen since last night.

Rather than maintaining an ever evolving blacklist of countries, I'm taking a more aggressive, albeit easier to manage approach - maintaining a whitelist of allowed countries.

No need to document which countries are allowed here - we don't need to give up info that can be used against us. Rather, suffice it to say I'm fairly confident we're not blocking legitimate users. The list was determined by looking at our Google Analytics stats over the last several months, and including countries that showed any legitimate activity.

Still, there's always the possibility users in allowed countries will get blocked, or we may wish to open access to additional countries. For either of these cases, the "access denied" error such users will see has contact info for them to email us, allowing us to address any such situations as they occur.

Gotta love the spammers...a constant game of cat and mouse.
 
Thanks Bill. I like getting new members to our site, but it was kind of silly there for a while.

I mentioned this on another thread, but would like to remind folks again here. If you come across a suspicious post you can let us know about it (we always appreciate that) but please don't reply to the thread. It isn't necessarily dangerous or inviting trouble if you do, but it makes cleanup take a bit longer. Usually it doesn't matter, but the last couple of days they were coming quicker than we could delete them.

It is a lot easier to delete the spam posts if none of our folks have replied to them. Especially if I am away from home and doing the editing from my phone. To delete a single post requires us to simply click once on a little X; deleting a thread requires more clicking around in areas that would be easy to screw up with the phone.

Thanks.
 
The country block has been removed, much to the appreciation of the handful of folks who were getting caught up in it.

While it helped initially, it was a shotgun approach that didn't fix the primary reason for the recent influx of spammers; with just the block in place, they were still sneaking in routinely via countries we were not blocking. The root of the problem - their latest spamming tools figured out a way around our registration questions/answers that were put in place to foil automated signups.

That hole has been plugged - for now. Since doing so, all attempts at automated signups have been blocked, hence the removal of the country blocks.

One bonus from this little fiasco...it's been quite entertaining (on my part) to chat with folks from all over the world who visit us routinely. We've far more regular users from unexpected places than I would have guessed.
 
I don't know why in the world someone would want to mess up a great website that's been very constructive in presenting safe boating procedures, videos, pictures, great boats, and other equipment! I guess that they've never been a part of something "GOOD" and resent folks that are!!! "Thanks" to all that make this website operate, as well as to everyone that contributes to the knowledge of the sport of boating on this website!

I'll get off my soapbox now!! :amgry Glad I said it!!! :D
 
Thanks to all the "nerds" (term of endearment) that make this Pub a great place to hang out! Da Nag what are some of the other countries that visit the site?
 
Interesting info. Thanks again for the fix. You guys are great. Had no idea the C-Brats had that wide a circulation. GO C-BRATS :thup :thup

Harvey
SleepyC:moon
 
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