antares
09-25-2004, 01:23 PM
To those who don't know, "chan" = Hongfire's IRC channel.
(I've personally gone over this with Paizu many times before but the problem still remains.)
The problem: Spammer bots/botnet are spamming regular users besides the ops/hops. I'm not sure about voiced.
The old solution: There is a suggestion in the topic to set umode +X, which prevents PMs and notices from unregistered users.
The NEW problem: The attacker(s) have learned to make these bots register themselves with services. The spamming continues whether or not your are +X. Mode +X also has a negative side effect that notices from network services also get blocked. This is very cumbersome when you need to interact with them.
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Why the problem remains unsolved:: The channel needs to remain "public", as I am told, in order to get more people to join. This may work for new channels. However, it has been proven from all this time that the channel has remained public that you are NOT getting any new users. The number of users have remained pretty constant for a long time now.
On the contrary, with users getting spammed over and over, more and more people will simply leave the channel. I for one have taken the chan off my auto-join list.
Believe me when I say that /list is now used mostly by spammers. Think about it. What are the chances that a normal user would perform a /list, sees the channel (besides all other public ones), and thinks to himself, "wow, I think I'm going to join this channel!". I'm convinced that the majority of those who come to the channel KNOW beforehand of the channel's existence without relying on /list.
The only plausible reason for making it public is so it would be seen when someone does a /whois on someone else. For this to work, you need as many people to be in the chan as possible to indirectly advertize for you. However, you may or may not realize that this is also another means for spammers to get to your chan. For the normal users who join the channel this way, they will be idling a while to see what's going on, be greeted with spams, get tired of them and leave. As these "advertizers" leave, it causes a snowball effect that makes this entire scheme fail.
The op/hops do not feel that this is a pressing issue because they're not the ones getting bothered by this.
The spamming occurs randomly at random time, but for those who are connected 24 hours a day, they will be sure to receive at least 3-4 of these a day. Not that many, but consider those who're connected 7 days a week and getting these everyday. The fact that there is an apparent solution that won't be implemented adds more to the frustration.
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Making a chan +s is a safe practice. Only when you are losing significant number of people (e.g. down to half of what you have) or that spamming still persists regardless of +s, that you should consider other solutions. Making a channel public is NOT a solution.
(I've personally gone over this with Paizu many times before but the problem still remains.)
The problem: Spammer bots/botnet are spamming regular users besides the ops/hops. I'm not sure about voiced.
The old solution: There is a suggestion in the topic to set umode +X, which prevents PMs and notices from unregistered users.
The NEW problem: The attacker(s) have learned to make these bots register themselves with services. The spamming continues whether or not your are +X. Mode +X also has a negative side effect that notices from network services also get blocked. This is very cumbersome when you need to interact with them.
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
Why the problem remains unsolved:: The channel needs to remain "public", as I am told, in order to get more people to join. This may work for new channels. However, it has been proven from all this time that the channel has remained public that you are NOT getting any new users. The number of users have remained pretty constant for a long time now.
On the contrary, with users getting spammed over and over, more and more people will simply leave the channel. I for one have taken the chan off my auto-join list.
Believe me when I say that /list is now used mostly by spammers. Think about it. What are the chances that a normal user would perform a /list, sees the channel (besides all other public ones), and thinks to himself, "wow, I think I'm going to join this channel!". I'm convinced that the majority of those who come to the channel KNOW beforehand of the channel's existence without relying on /list.
The only plausible reason for making it public is so it would be seen when someone does a /whois on someone else. For this to work, you need as many people to be in the chan as possible to indirectly advertize for you. However, you may or may not realize that this is also another means for spammers to get to your chan. For the normal users who join the channel this way, they will be idling a while to see what's going on, be greeted with spams, get tired of them and leave. As these "advertizers" leave, it causes a snowball effect that makes this entire scheme fail.
The op/hops do not feel that this is a pressing issue because they're not the ones getting bothered by this.
The spamming occurs randomly at random time, but for those who are connected 24 hours a day, they will be sure to receive at least 3-4 of these a day. Not that many, but consider those who're connected 7 days a week and getting these everyday. The fact that there is an apparent solution that won't be implemented adds more to the frustration.
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
Making a chan +s is a safe practice. Only when you are losing significant number of people (e.g. down to half of what you have) or that spamming still persists regardless of +s, that you should consider other solutions. Making a channel public is NOT a solution.