Chinese Bots?

So whats with all these bots popping up writing posts in Chinese (Or maybe Korean I don't know for sure). Just look at the front page.

I'm just curious as to what is up with the influx of bots recently?

When I saw the chinese bot for the first time, I had this uneasy feeling that it might be, because of me. In at least one post I once wrote something in Chinese and this begs the question now, if this - somehow - attracted a chinese bot? Or maybe because I access Doomworld from China?! Same goes for the Korean, because there was at least one person here with a korean background of some sort. Either studying the language, or having Hangul in his name, etc.

So yeah, the bots are very annoying and it would be very nice, if this could be fixed. Also, I'm sorry, if somehow I am the cause of this, even in part.

you're probably not responsible. Some spam group's probably just noticed there's a decentish population of users here so they've turned some sort of automated spam system (probably a botnet with slaves all across the world -- so impossible to ip block) on the forum. Not a whole lot that can be done beyond cleanup at the moment..

It’s Korean by the way, and damn it’s annoying. It’s only been happening for the last ~2 months too.. EDIT: Oh shit I see the screenshot now, it wasn't showing up before. The top ones are Chinese, the one in Doom Eternal is Korean.

I know some clever individual came up with a tool that detects and blocks proxies for Zandronum, maybe that’s worth looking into? Sometimes innocent people get falsely detected though so even that is not ideal. I guess another possibility is placing even more posting restrictions on newly created accounts but damn, at that point, the bots have won haven’t they..!

6 minutes ago, Doomkid said:

It’s Korean by the way

There are Korean and Chinese bots actually. I guess whatever being used here is common currency in some places.

The ZDoom forums has a system in which a newly registered member's first post has to be approved in order to appear.

I for one would welcome such a feature in Doomworld, if it can keep those annoying bots away...

I think part of the problem is Linguica has limited access to what he can actually do with the forum, which is probably what sparked him asking us for names if he does move them elsewhere (because then he's got full control of the server and can do whatever he needs to do). The current person hosting it apparently doesn't give him that level of control, or I'm pretty sure something would've been done by now.

I've translated a few of these with Google Translate and many of them were about some Korean and Chinese online racing site. They also posted some political news , I think. I don't remember much about the translations because I never bothered compiling them but some of them doesn't make any sense like:

Quote

"My son was raped by the online racing site."

I'm not making these up, this actually popped up on Google Translate. I think it was on one of the threads that the smonders bot posted. I might be wrong though because Google Translate isn't always accurate. I might try compiling the threads the next time those get posted here.

Well, gambling does tend to rape some people of their life's savings and so on... so it's entirely possible "My son was raped by the online racing site" is actually accurate.

These things are plaguing lots of old forums these days, especially ones that don't moderate new members. Sometimes they're so stupid they're funny, usually they're just incredibly annoying.

The easiest way to separate Hangul from other Oriental forms of lettering is in knowing that only Hangul has circles. 

1 hour ago, Ajora said:

The easiest way to separate Hangul from other Oriental forms of lettering is in knowing that only Hangul has circles. 

It depends on the calligraphy but it's a good rule of thumb with common fonts if you are completely stranger to these languages.

Easiest way to differentiate CJK:

• Does it tend to have lots of loops/circles and relatively low symbol complexity? It's Korean.
• Does it tend to all be pictographs, with no deviation in the symbols in terms of there being alternate types of characters? It's Chinese.
• Does it mix in secondary syllabaries with simpler forms alongside the pictographs? It's Japanese.

That said, these aren't hard-and-fast rules. Korean, for example, also makes use of Chinese characters (there called Hanja) especially in older stuff, and it's entirely possible (although very confusing and ambiguous) to write Japanese in Hiragana and/or Katakana (seen in a lot of 80s games where the space for character glyphs was at a premium).

But then again, I do some Japanese translation stuff at the side, so I can pretty easily tell CJK apart by now. :P

I did a research looking for the MA892 thing on Google and... is just spam for a horse riding bet site, that on Google translate gives hilarious and a little unsettling results, like in one it talked about a new kindergarten somewhere in Republic of Korea (is south Korea, right?) Including the horse riding site, another time the poster blame the politics and the president of Republic of Korea for publicising this damn site, after some scandal that happened... Keep publicising this site. Ok.

Also we are not the only one that have this type of visitors: I see that also sites of online mmorpg games, the xiaomi forum and a forum of e-commerce have this MA892 guys spamming around....

Rule of thumb: Korean spam will always be about South Korea. Only the elites in North Korea have access to the outside Internet, so you can bet that no spammer is going to be for a North Korean site or whatever. Hell, I think Gambling's illegal there.

They mostly come at night. Mostly.

Bot's always seem to find a way through a forums "safeguards". When i used to be a moderator on a website we would always tend to have an influx of bots at random times (although mostly at my nighttime hours). Sometimes they would have Russian IP's. Sometimes Chinese or Korean. Either way, they always found a way through unless you decided to ban the whole IP range which could end up banning quite a few users in the process. Luckily, this site seems to be a LOT better at keeping them at bay. Only a few seem to make it through. It's a lot better than getting bombarded by a shit ton of 'em all at once.

These stupid bots resurface every few months. Sadly there aren't many solutions that wouldn't crossfire legit users in the process.. Then again I don't think I've seen anyone do any thread in asian languages in ages.

Do the email used to register the accounts use the same disposable domain? Can we stop threads using certain keywords/characters from being created?

So what do they actually say?

1 hour ago, Maximum Matt said:

So what do they actually say?

"our author was raped by a horse. and a donkey. and by both simultaneously. visit our site to get the same expirience."

Just removed a post quoting and translating a complete spam message. It's SPAM people, don't spread it.

On ‎4‎/‎30‎/‎2019 at 3:33 PM, ketmar said:

"our author was raped by a horse. and a donkey. and by both simultaneously. visit our site to get the same expirience."

Oh ok.