Spam attacks on this forum

[rainier]

This has been a daily issue - when you sign up you need to answer a few questions to try and identify if you are genuine but that does not elliminate the problem - just reduces it. In the past I would get around 100 fake signups per day mostly from Russian sources advertising anything from Viagra to political statements or just rubbish. I blocked the .ru domain and also gmail as that is a favorite email source to use. This helped reduce the problem to around 20-30 per day. Our ISP upgraded their defenses recently which was effective resulting in only a few per day.

They are easy to spot due to the content and I can then weed them out of the database.

If I can see that your first post is genuine - I then activate your account and you are free to post.

Now things have taken a new turn - AI is getting involved and I have in the past days deleted a few new users with first posts that at first glance look genuine and related to the topic - but on second look it appears fake.
Examples:
There was a question on calibrating the ASI. A new user posted an answer which went like this: Press the menu button (so far so good) and then look at pages 55 and 56 (that's not so good - not even if this is meant to be the installation manual). I deleted the user and post. Another one relates to the thread on V6 mounting screws. The answer from a newly registered user looks genuine but refers to incorrect screws (imperial and not metric) and mentions that you should always look at the product manual. Hmm - that seems fake so the same treatment.

There is a danger now that I will remove a new user that is in fact genuine but the post looks questionable. If you think this happened to you and I did this in error please send a message via the below "contact us" button.

[rainier]

I have been forced to delete all inactive users due to a massive attack resulting in some 25000 bogus users in the database.
Inactive users are those that registered but never posted.
If you are one of them, you registered but never posted your details would have been purged from the database and you will have to register again if you would like to post. Please accept my apologies if this affects you.

[rainier]

Seems AI is starting to be used to create the text for the SPAM. Makes it harder to determine if a post is genuine or spam. First time I have now seen this. First post I read from the spammer looked quite genuine asking about connecting a hall effect sensor to a "5600 EFIS" - I'd assume that comes from AFS which has such a model. Goes on about alternators etc. Two further posts from same spam address however where clearly spam and not related to subject so that gave it away.

[rainier]

Once in a while I have to clear out inactive users - these are users that have registered but never posted. An average of around 1000 or so register per month but these are nearly all fakes done by bots. I cannot distinguish these from real users so I delete all of them.

Should you have registered in the past months but never posted (so your account was never activated) please register again if you would like to post. Once your account is validated and activated it will not be removed in future.

[funflyingguy]

appreciate the update on this ongoing nuisance attack. keep up the good work... is there even more security that might help? (or does that start to get into complexity and cost?)

.... jim