Hi Dokugians!

Since the election in the US, we've had an influx of spammers - mostly from China and Russia. I zapped about a page full of them today and still we had three get through. I'm doing the best I can; I check them almost every hour or so, but they are pretty persistent.

So, consider this my apology for not catching them all, and a promise to try to catch more of them before they spam the site. I do have to sleep occasionally... more than usual, given my advancing age and stress levels, LOL! Still, I will do my best to zap them before we end up with porn or other toxic links on our forum.

Your patience is, as always, GREATLY appreciated!!

~~Wiccan~~

They have been a pain in the patootie. SPAM BUSTING ADMINISTRATORS UNITE!!!!!

I've seen them around. Thank you for putting so much effort into getting rid of them. I'm sure I'm not the only one who appreciates it!

GO, GO, DEMONQUEEN!!!!!!!!!!!

Unleash the combined wrath of US! LOL!!

Seriously, I'm pretty tired of the darn things too, especially when they creep in while I'm sleeping.

Ah well, no more slipped in overnight, so we shall endeavor to persevere!

~~me~~

I appreciate all you've done with spam hunting.

I have friends who are site admins elsewhere, and in those in cyber security and they've all been noticing a dramatic uptick in hackers from both of those countries. It's getting ridiculous all around.

Okay, I spent my weekend researching the spammers. Here's what I found:

82 new user IDs
42 unique IP addresses
12 unique countries

Overnight, from 10:30pm EST to 10:00am EST, 33 new accounts with only 3 legitimate.

I researched the IP ranges on 4 IPs,

37.112.***.***
37.115.***.***
46.118.***.***
46.119.***.***

Of those 4, I found ONE, just ONE, user that is still active. The problem is that, with one active user, I cannot ask Mith to kill an entire range. Unfortunately, that range I cannot kill houses a metric shitton of spam users. *sigh* Many of them are from the Russian Federation and the Ukraine.

I can't ask Mith to kill a user who has been online for the last 4 years. That's not cool whether or not that user donates to keep the site going.

The real problem is killing the ONE spammer that is using ONE IP address. If I asked Mith to kill each ID addy, it would take the poor man forever. I will ask him to block the most prevalent, largest IPs, but beyond that, I can't do much.

Please remember that Mitharus has a job and family... and it's not so simple to block a freaking huge list of spam IPs.

Anyway, thanks so much for your patience and forbearance. We're doing the best we can with limited resources.
:/
~~Wiccan~~

Don't worry Wiccan. We appreciate the hard work that you, Mith, and all the other admins do to continue to give Dokuga your all, in addition to having a life. It's a never ending event all over the interwebs, so we all need to remember to surf the net responsibly.

<3 L

Thanks for all your work on stopping the spammers!