Author Topic: IRC Spambots  (Read 3270 times)

Offline leeor_net

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IRC Spambots
« on: March 02, 2019, 07:36:36 PM »
Hey, forumites!

We've had a bit of a rash of spam bots posting links to twitter accounts spewing out white supremacist nonsense. To counter this I've temporarily set the channel to require that joining users have registered their nick with Quakenet's IRC servers. I'll leave the requirement in place while I'm away from the channel and can't immediately step in to monitor it though it will have the effect of making it impossible for users using the webchat feature to join while the flag is in place.

From what I can tell this spam bot plague is affecting all public channels on Quakenet that don't have +r and or +i on their channels. I'll keep monitoring the situation and hopefully soon I can keep +r off the channel for the most part.

If you're a user trying to join IRC through the webchat and you're getting an error about not being allowed to join #Outpost2, this is why. You can post here or you can send me a message here or on IRC and I can add your nick to the userlist.

Offline White Claw

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Re: IRC Spambots
« Reply #1 on: March 02, 2019, 07:49:44 PM »
Ah, glad you posted. I would have been quite confused about why I couldn't get in, since my nick isn't registered.

Offline leeor_net

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Re: IRC Spambots
« Reply #2 on: March 02, 2019, 07:55:33 PM »
Yus, been in touch with some of the quakenet staff. They gave me a couple of suggestions so hopefully I we can avoid flood spam in the future. This seems to be affecting a large number of otherwise visible channels. As much as I hate to set the channel to secret (+s), how many people are really going to be looking at the channel list from QuakeNet to find an OUTPOST based channel?

That should handle most of it but it'll take a little bit before it becomes effective. In the meantime I've removed +r but that could change as the night progresses.