Forum Security and Spam bots

    My browser has marked the forum and my connection to it, as not fully secure. I thought one of the reasons that Travian moved from Vbulletin to BB, was to improve security?




    Also, can something please be done about the constant spam bots? There were approx 100 posts made early this morning, that remained on the forum for several hours and despite assurances from senior crew, nothing appears to be changing in the fight against the bots.
    There are many steps that can be taken as captcha alone, is not enough to stop them. Have the following been considered? I think I have suggested similar steps many times before.


    1. Returning to manual approval of both new members and their 1st few posts.
    2. Preventing new users from making repeated posts in a given amount of time.
    3. Deny registration of new users from IP addresses that are known to be spam bots.
    4. Use a blacklist register to check new registrations

    Cali wrote:

    My browser has marked the forum and my connection to it, as not fully secure. I thought one of the reasons that Travian moved from Vbulletin to BB, was to improve security?

    This is not only the case for the forum, but also for the game itself, if you log in through the new frontpage. Which means that your login credentials are sent through an insecure connection. For example, this most likely means that anyone on the same connection as you (for example public wifi) would be able to see your information. It might present other security flaws too, but I honestly don't know too much about it.


    The connection is secure if you log in from the specific server adress (i.e. ts19.travian.com and similar), but not if you log in from travian.com (or travian.com/uk as would be the case for this domain).




    In regards to spambots - another bout of lovely korean spam there now it seems :p

    First of all that exlamation mark does not mean that the website is not secure, but that there are things (like for example your signature) that are on an unsafe site :) That is just a warning that on the page there might be unsecure elements, and you could have investigated a bit before to post such an alarmist message that is definetely not needed.


    In fact if you go on the general page the safe is recognize as perfectly secure, and this is because there are no images uploaded on external websites :)


    About the spam bot, sorry but your complain is no-sense. There are really few spam bot and they get removed in less than 5 minutes at the moment.


    And btw, 90% of the stuff you mention are implemented already :)
    But these bots does not register atomatically, they register manually (there is a real person who register the accounts) therefore there is not much we can do, beside banning them in less than 5 mintues. Which really does not kill your forum experience :)

    Administrator wrote:

    you could have investigated a bit before to post such an alarmist message that is definetely not needed.

    I did investigate it and looked at several pages before I posted. My browser highlighted the site as being unsafe and that is why I posted what I did. It was a question, not an "alarmist message"!

    wishmaster3 wrote:


    This is not only the case for the forum, but also for the game itself, if you log in through the new frontpage. W


    I did login in 4 different domain and noone of them have this issue, they are all set as secure.
    Can you please provide me the server you logged in, thanks.

    Cali wrote:

    I did investigate it and looked at several pages before I posted. My browser highlighted the site as being unsafe and that is why I posted what I did. It was a question, not an "alarmist message"!


    Well the screenshot you posted is not stating that the site is unsecure. If the site was unsecure you should have got a nice red page, which push you out of the site.


    But, fine if this is a big deal we will remove the possibility for forum user to add any kind of image or having any kind of image in the signature. This will solve the issue and all the pages will have back the secure logo on top left.

    Adminstrator...Sounds like you are having a bad day, take a step back and get rid of your negattive attitude before you show your presence next time, thanks!


    Not everyone knows about how the warnings work and why some pages show up as insecure, just like you don't know how to talk to other people.


    Focus on what you're good at and help people with that.

    Administrator wrote:

    About the spam bot, sorry but your complain is no-sense. There are really few spam bot and they get removed in less than 5 minutes at the moment.

    There were over a hundred spam posts this morning on the UK domain, that began to be posted from 04:00 onwards and remained there for a lot longer than the 5 minutes that you claim. I guess I must have ruffled a few feathers to recieve such antagonism from an administrator.


    Btw, it's nonsense, not no-sense...

    Administrator wrote:

    I would ask you Lemon to try not to interpret the tone or feelings of others.
    I am perfectly fine and I am having a great day actually :)

    Well, I saw you were looking for a psychologist in another thread a few days ago, so here I am, ready to help you :)


    Glad you are having a great day, too bad your attitude here on the forum is showing something else.


    But your comment about spam bots is a joke, do you even know what is going on here on the forum? Some spam bot posts were up for more than 2 hours this morning. (On the UK domain, which is the most active English domain, in case you weren't aware of that)


    The post was edited 3 times, last by Lemon ().

    Administrator wrote:

    I would ask you Lemon to try not to interpret the tone or feelings of others.
    I am perfectly fine and I am having a great day actually :)

    @Administrator


    Hello. I noticed you locked another thread and mentioned the discontent on the current UK Forum. I am very glad you have noticed this, but ask you to consider why there is this discontent? With Mhudson as admin everything was running smoothly, this only changed when he was replaced with Templar Knight and we were met with a totally different tone and modding style from that of our old admin, and then two very well liked UK SMods were forced from their posts. This is why their is discontent, and to change anything it must come from Admin, Ameno and Templar Knight, you will never change the users opinions by doing nothing. So please do not blame the users for something you created entirely by yourselves, but instead notice that you can fix this if you think about it.


    I have also passed on similar comments by email, I just wished for them to be on the forum too for everyone to read.

    Administrator wrote:

    I did login in 4 different domain and noone of them have this issue, they are all set as secure.
    Can you please provide me the server you logged in, thanks.




    "The data entered will be sent via an unsafe connection and can potentially be read by a third party"



    This is not just the case for com8, but also for com19.

    What a shocking response from a customer service representative. Is Admin/Ameno also TK? Are all the mods actually just one person? I hope not, but I doubt they could do a worse job than the current crew.

    Administrator wrote:

    And btw, 90% of the stuff you mention are implemented already :)
    But these bots does not register atomatically, they register manually (there is a real person who register the accounts) therefore there is not much we can do, beside banning them in less than 5 mintues. Which really does not kill your forum experience :)

    I was struggling to fall asleep when I realised that i had forgotten to reply to something...As I have told you a couple times before, the bots are not registered manually, it's fully automatic.


    It is still possible to register without having to answer the Travian related question (and there are no captha's anymore) I even reported this a few months ago, and you still believe you are right?


    I'm starting to believe that you have no idea what you are talking about.



    Time to sleep...

    MadZ wrote:

    What a shocking response from a customer service representative. Is Admin/Ameno also TK? Are all the mods actually just one person? I hope not, but I doubt they could do a worse job than the current crew.

    This is why it's safe to say the future of Travian is non-existent, these are the people in charge of the community and no one with any sort of responsibility seems to actually care.

    Administrator, on the other thread you cited some nonsense about privacy law as the reason why you can't post about it. Isn't that just an elaborate way of saying that the confidentiality clauses within the contracts Meme and Cali entered into prevent them from speaking about their dissatisfaction at being ousted and the surrounding circumstances?


    Of course, if both sides waived that confidentiality, as is entirely their right, they could discuss the details publicly on the forum. There is no privacy law I have ever heard of that prevents two consenting parties from agreeing to waive confidentiality.


    If, as you imply, we all simply have the wrong end of the stick and those supporting Meme and Cali are unnecessarily and inappropriately posting in their favour when in truth you've done nothing wrong, then why don't you, from your end, waive the confidentiality requirement to prove that to be the case. It seems to me that Meme and Cali have already suggested they would be prepared to talk about it if they could, but are estopped from doing so for abovementioned reasons. On the other hand, you're here hiding behind some nonsense privacy law for your inaction in addressing the legitimate grievances of forum users, so you'll see why we're all less than convinced by your drivel.



    Administrator: out of topic and again I cannot answer you due to the law, so why bring the topic up here when it's definetely not the right place? Meem and Cali knows perfectly that we cannot talk with others about the situation and they are profiting from it. Usually when you want to find the truth you talk with both parties, due to law we are not allowed to answer anything, and they know this pretty damn well. So ask yourself questions, more than asking us.

    We implemented the google captcha (the most secure version) and the bot issue increased, therefore we changes strategy :)

    wishmaster3 wrote:


    This is not just the case for com8, but also for com19.


    Tested in all these domain with different browsers and still it says it safe. Do you have installed the latest browser version? Are you sure you do not have installed any unsafe app/widget on your browser?



    (Sicuro means secure in italian, yes I do use an Italian browser because that is my native language)

    Administrator wrote:

    We implemented the google captcha (the most secure version) and the bot issue increased, therefore we changes strategy :)

    And how did that one go? The Automatic bots are still getting through.


    Could be because it was possible to register without doing the captha, just like it's currently possible to register without having to answer the Travian related question :)

    Administrator wrote:

    Do you have installed the latest browser version? Are you sure you do not have installed any unsafe app/widget on your browser?

    Yes. No.


    It's not an issue for me, I go to the specific server and log in, and I never have issues on any other sites. Know others pointed out this issue right when the new page was released too.