Jon

Everyone-

If you see spammers hitting this forum, report them. Don't just post laughing at them. You can laugh all you like, but we find more spammers through reported posts than through any other means. Thanks.

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DruSam

Yeah the past 2 weeks I swear I've banned at least 10 different spam accounts here. I'm hoping this is just a seasonal thing (spammers back from thanksgiving vacation???).

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Jon

I am starting to IP ban them too, and disallow proxies from accessing the forum.

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stickycarrots

I'll kill 'em.

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John

I think I am getting Carpal tunnel syndrome from all the banning I do

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illusion

I have been reporting those motherfuckers

PreZ

On multiple forums I own this is becoming a huge problem and all my mods are getting fucking pissed. I wonder whats been fueling this lately. Even with captcha on they are still spamming hard.

Maybe someone has a way around captcha now?

DruSam

Could be true. Myspace is having a hard time using their captcha to thwart spam accounts.

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Reefer420

jon- any good advice on banning spammers from forums?

Jdog

Earlier today, I saw the newest member was growthspurtlinda or something like that. I never saw her spam though.

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DruSam

Are you suggesting we employ a preemptive strike policy on Wickedfire?

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Th3Boss

wow, very good job, i have seen no spam threads at all

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CreationNation

Few things I do on mine that have helped me:

1) Make sure you have email verification turned on, as well as Captcha (even though it isn't full proof).

2) Set your forum to notify you via email when someone joins. This has aided me in weeding out spammers very quick since I am working here all day at my email. you can detect a spammer 80% of the time once you get used to seeing the trends (user name structure, @emaildomains.com, etc.).

3) Before you completely delete/ban/prune a spammer, see what email address they used. If it is something like joeblow@buygreatdrugs.info then, add buygreatdrugs.info to your admincp>user banning options>banned email list. Do this every time otherwise you will contonue to allow those spammers/bots to use that email domain. Here is a starter list for you if you like:
4) Add disallowed keywords to your admincp>registration options>illegal user names list. I added a bunch that were very recurring by spammers such as:
Those measures have helped me DRASTICALLY over the last few months. I get the occasional ipod pusher and such but not so much the drug spammers etc. any more.

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TwoFifty

I think this may well be down to a new bit of software called Forum Equalizer

dastuff

Agreed... But if there's a problem then there's a need to fix that problem

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GeorgeB

Good points creationation.

I also just installed this for my mods and staff: QUICK BAN in postbit_legacy for vB3.6 - vBulletin.org Forum

Not a complete solution or anything but makes the banning process a few less clicks.

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CreationNation

Oh that's sweet, I'll definitely add this one. Thanks for the heads up!

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Albert

Email confirmation and capcha will deter all automated spammers.

Reefer420

thanks guys- i'm def. going to add that vb mod...

photoads

Jon you mean all those cell phone offers from Nigeria are spam, & I thought they were having pre xmas sales?

Nice mod GeorgeB

Jdog

I've been getting a lot of wierd spam e-mails lately that don't have any links in them. Don't know what's up with that.

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photoads

Jdog - try cloudmark, seems a great outlook add-on. I added it last week as the wifes been moaning like hell about spam .... it's keeping her quiet so it must be good.

Cloudmark - Intelligent Messaging Security for Service Providers - Anti-spam, Anti-virus, Anti-phishing

bigbyte

They are testing to see if the email account exists. The messages should read "Congratulations. If you read this your email account has been upgraded to Tier II SPAM. Please provide adequate room for email storage and bandwidth to avoid any interruption of our preferred service."

Chris

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Jdog

It isn't congratulations e-mails, they are stock news and stuff. It is caught as spam, but they get through to my crackberry.

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Albert

The spammers are quite smart and keep changing thier tactics. Now they send mail with RE: in the header to make you think they are replying to you as well as putting gibberish in the header to make you click out of curiosity.