Spammer Registrations
 

Most regular visitors to the site don't realize the war against spammers that goes on behind the scenes. As the problem skyrocketed earlier this year I installed some software that compares the registration information and IP number to a spammer database and rejects any registration that matches the data in the database. In May the software rejected 38,083 registrations on this site. Unfortunately about 1000 or so still got through as the spammers change their IP number, setup yet another Gmail address and try to re-register on hundreds of forums. For each of the registrations that get through I have to lookup the IP and location and report it to the spammer database if it appears to be a spammer. This is really time consuming when I wake up to 30 or 40 new registrations. Usually only a few of those are legitimate.

This is the primary reason I can not allow immediate registrations and go through an approval step. If I didn't our forum would be flooded by spammers.

The reason I bring this up is I get a lot of questions and complaints about delays in approving new registrations. If you are a new member that hasn't been approved yet please drop me an email and I'll review and approve it right away. Otherwise it may take me a few days to get through the list.

It is astounding how many spammer registration attempts occur. Almost all come from Russia, China, Romania, India and other countries in that area. That does make them easy to spot. When the registration is from Romania it is a pretty safe bet they don't want to talk about Pop's.

Hi Don,

I certainly understand! I finally had to disable the registration function on my website and I now handle them manually through email requests.

I can do this because new registrations on my site are very low. But I can see how this would be a major headache for you.

I don't see it happening, but it sure would be nice if these spammers were hunted and procecuted more vigorously.

Well at least what has happened to me, has never happened here. I subscribe to a weekly newsletter on saltwater fishing and now twice my email have been bombarded with requests to subscribe to the newsletter coming to MY email address as well I imagine everyone who is a subscriber. What a pain! You got a tough job Don, thanks.

Don,
Having trouble thinking like a bad guy. What is the motivation for them to try so hard to register? Is it to get to us?
Thanks

RG,

A tactic I have sen a lot on a couple other boards is the "New Member" posts a thread like this...

"Hi gang! I am thinking of getting (this product). Has anyone here used it and how good is it?

WWW.spamlink.com "

They then add a duplicate post on each subforum until a member or moderator sees the pattern and flags it as SPAM. SPAM of any kind is such a cheap advertising medium that you only need to make something like one sale per million messages to make a profit.

Kamper explained it well. They blanket every forum they can find and usually get in since most only require a simple email verification to post. The additional examination and approval step I put new members through is unusual but effective keeping the bad guys out of our forum entirely.

For anyone interested here is the site that manages the spammer database. So far it's a free service:

http://www.stopforumspam.com

I know a few members run other forums. Here is the vBulletin plugin I'm using. It's also available for other forum systems:

http://www.vbulletin.org/forum/showthread.php?t=176481

Spammer Registrations
 

Thanks for all that you do for us Don!

Should this thread have a sticky in the Site Support Forum for those looking to join?

I see you have a captcha to reduce the number of spammer account bots, but I've found that somehow the bots can decipher them.

I don't know if this forum software supports it, but try setting up a question/answer challenge on new accounts. On a weather board I help run which uses Invision software, making new accounts first answer "What color is snow?" effectively wiped out virtually all spam bots.

Spam
 

I see plenty of spam in the classified section which nothing gets done about. Find it very rude of dealers that do this and would never buy anything from them because of it.

Mr.webmaster
 

In reference to the post above. If you consider offering my hand built boats to members of this site @ all most wholesale spam. Just send me a PM. Thanks........:)

I've received a few complaints lately about the delay caused by the manual approval step before new registrants can post so I thought I'd update and bump this thread. Most forums only require an email verification.

To demonstrate the need for this I posted in the original post two years ago that our stopforumspam filter had rejected 38,083 spammer registrations in the previous month. I just checked and now we've had 39,434 rejected just in the last week.

Obviously this problem is growing exponentially and without the stopforumspam database it would be unmanageable.

So, I apologize for the delay new registrants experience before they can post but it is unavoidable and the reason you don't see the "My friend made $75 an hour at home..." posts that are so common on other forums and comment boards.