We have been having an epic battle with spam bots, including fake “subscribers” who somehow manage to get past our Captcha and other screens and clog up our roster with thousands (literally) of fake “subscriber” e-mails/handles that clog up our works. I just got through a systematic culling. I moved most of the legitimate people – regulars/known actual humans and not bots or spammers – to “contributor” status. In future, anyone who wants to subscribe to EPautos will need to send either myself or Dom an e-mail asking about it and we’ll set it up. It’s become a tedious time-waster dealing with these &*!!&! spammers and bots. Genug, already.
I’m still very interested in hearing from anyone out there who might be interested in writing for the site. Especially someone who wants to write about classic cars or motorcycle and can write about them. It can be for fun, or it can be for real – in the sense that EPautos has traffic enough to be a legitimate reference/clip bank for someone interested in establishing himself (or herself) as a motor journalist. Please contact us if you might be that person.
I’m also herewith announcing my reluctant availability for radio/TV interviews. I am an introvert by nature, so these things are ordeals for me – but I recognize it’s necessary to get the word out, not just about EPautos but about our message of liberty, live – and let live. So, if you’re a radio programming manager or host (or whatever) and are possibly interested in having me hold forth on some topic that’s been written about here or that’s related, drop me a line.
Finally, my thanks to everyone who has recently supported the site financially. We appreciate it very much. You also have my promise that I will not pester you more often than is absolutely necessary to keep us afloat. We’re not looking to get rich; but we do have to earn a living.
The link to our “donate” button is here. You can also mail stuff our way – if you prefer to avoid PayPal. The address is:
EPAutos
721 Hummingbird Lane, SE
Copper Hill, VA 24079
50 years ago on February 9th, 1964, 73 million out of 192 million Americans witnessed the Beatles and the British Cultural Invasion
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CqrauzHPpwE
All My Loving – Cover – Lindsey Skeye
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rs6lp-y5Sew
What Google doesn’t show you:
31% of website traffic can harm your business
http://www.incapsula.com/blog/what-google-doesnt-show-you-31-of-website-traffic-can-harm-your-business.html
I administer several fora and three blogs, and spambots have been a serious problem occasionally. I’ve found that a two layer captcha with a real question that must be answered with a typed word is the best protection. An American slang phrase with a word missing is great. Won’t keep out all the “clovers,” but it would stop the bots.
I used to handle about 50 false registrations a day at the largest forum, but now probably don’t have more than one spammer a week… and they are human types, I believe. The bots can’t actually “think” – at least not yet.
An American slang phrase with a word missing would also keep out people like me, from the real world. I’ve often had to ask people to explain their explanations, when they dropped in a reference to “Mayberry” or whatever that was meaningless to me until then.
I am curious, why do you guys get so many spammers? Do you guys think its just bad luck, or is the government deliberately subverting your operation?
At any rate, keep fighting the good fight.
It’s just part of having a website.
Thing is, Dom, that you don’t have to put up with spambots. My main forum has many thousands of members, and we get an astonishing amount of traffic, but the double captcha has eliminated 99.9% of the spam and does not take up any of my time or effort. My own blog gets easily 100 spam comments a day, but they are automatically quarantined and I just dump them without even looking at them.
Right, our spam trap is good at catching more than 95% of the crap but we still get a lot. I run a few other websites and have NEVER had spam, DOS, and hacking like we’ve had on this site. This site is a magnet for it. It’s a balancing act between security and ease of use. I really don’t like punishing people with too many barriers.
Perhaps it’s time to take a page out of the fictionalm world from Shadowrun, make Intrusion Countermeasures.
Something to the effect of a trojan which will allow you to do a low-level format of the remote attacker’s drive, say, if they turn out to be a problem…
Not a security expert, not sure how it could be done.
But maybe someone else knows how to do this?
Guys, this is a sort of addendum to the above – for the benefit of people not already registered here:
Please e-mail us if you’d like to become a Registered member here. Registered members’ posts get approved automatically (no waiting in the Moderation queue) and of course you’ll be automatically notified when new articles/comments are posted (if you wish; that can be turned on – or off – by you).
Apologies it has to be this way, but we don’t have time to sift through all the spammers. For every real person who tries to post we receive – literally – dozens of spams that have to be manually sorted through and deleted.
This way is much easier for us and keeps our community here happy.
To get registered, all you need to do is send us an e-mail ([email protected] or [email protected]) along with the following basic info:
Primary user name you’d like
Secondary if the first is taken
Password, you can change it later or we’ll make up the first one
Or post here! We check regularly and will get you in the club as quickly as possible.
Please note: We do NOT “share” (sell, or otherwise use) your information with anyone. EPautos will NEVER “partner” with Google or Facebook or any other government-corporate data mining entity. Unlike the government, we respect your rights, including your privacy!
When making a comment, the three rectangle spaces where a person would type in their name and email address are just three empty rectangles. No description or anything like, Name: or, email address:
Did you use white text on a white background?
Just thought I’d mention that in the unlikely event you didn’t know.