Spammers are out of on control!

Just before Christmas my DJ board started getting hit with spammers hard. Just 5+ per day prior to Christmas it was a few per week. None of them posted I nabbed them via manual lookups on stop forum spam. Two of my completely dead boards that have zero work done to them started getting the some of same spammers.

Getting fed up with all the spammers and it being the holidays meant all the staff wouldn't be around as often I finally installed the stop forum spam hack from vB.org just before New Years. I'd known about it for a while but hesitated to install because I wasn't sure what I was doing with the whole vBulletin 4 thing.

In about a week it's caught over 150 spammers!

View attachment 892

Two new things are happening on the spamming front:

A bunch of spammers (about 10 in the past couple of days) are signing up with Gmail addresses that don't post spam but post spam visitor (profile) messages with links. I've been nabbing them and submitting them to stop forum spam. I don't think other admins are catching them as none of them were listed at stop forum spam.

As a solution I've stopped registered users from posting visitor messages both on their own and other's profile via Usergroup controls. Now only promoted users (25 + posts) can post visitor messages. I may make a 10+ posts usergroup just because I think 25 if too many for this situation.

Secondly: I had one spammer lulusir, advertising video editing software who wasn't in the SFS database that kept coming back under a new IP (though on the same subnet) every time we'd ban he'd come back under lulusir1, lulusir2, lulusir3, etc. I'm think it's a bot finally I banned lulusir as user name in the ACP.

I hope this information help some of my fellow administrators. Has any one else been having an abnormal number of spammers? I could swear the spamming mofos maintain a list of forums to spam that they pass around to all their buddies.

 

The spammers that slip through - go to the stop forum spam site, sign up on their forum, get your key and start reporting the spammers.

I have reported about 5 or 6 spammers to the stop forum spam site. Hopefully, this will help stop them from signing up on other sites.

If your running something like recaptcha, that would have stopped some of that 150. The stop forum spam mod checks the person before they reach recaptcha.

 

Thanks Kevin that's why, I am running recatchpa. I thought the numbers were a little high with the SFS hack. I've had an API key for quite a while and am submitting any one the slips through as fast as I can.

I tried registering for the SFS forum several times and got myself listed as a spammer. After removing myself once with their on-site tools I got a hold of the webmaster on twitter and he fixed me right up although I still don't have a forum account due to it marking me as a spammer every time. :o At least the webmaster was easy to work with. All I really need is the API though.

 

Dan,

Wow, that a bit of a bummer. Quite a Hassle.

Sorry if I'm a little confused, but for clarification during the spam time you had in place:

recaptcha?


Or when you caught on you implemented recaptcha AND the SFS?


On your approach of min. posts before using visitor messages, here's a thought that would require action by the account holder and not a bot.

Have a usergroup setup that is Publically Joinable. Meaning, upon registration and successful authorization, your site auto matically makes them "registered ugroupie". Well, then via the UserCp, you have available "General ugroupie" that is exactly the same as "registered groupie" but allows Visitor messaging.

Idk if that really is possible for this. Also, you noted about gmail addresses. I recall on vb.org a mod that does some check against gmail.

 

I just double checked I thought that recatchpa was enabled, it turned it was just simple image verification. I must of signed up and enabled it for a client's board.

I've just enabled recatchpa.

I've got a couple of publicly join-able usergroups so that's not a bad idea. Thanks Nut.

As for Gmail some legitimate users use Gmail addresses so I'm hesitant to ban the domain and risk denying real member registration but a majority of spammers coming through have been gmail addresses lately.

 

Glad I could offer something that might be useful. Darn you for not having recapcha on.

As for the gmail, sorry for not elaborating. I wasn't meaning to ban indiscriminately. Shoot I use gmail. lol I was meaning something like the following mods:

http://www.vbulletin.org/forum/showthread.php?t=201466

http://www.vbulletin.org/forum/showthread.php?t=218153&highlight=gmail

I have no idea if really useful for you seeing as your current settings have changed to be recaptcha and SFS.

 

StopForumSpam works wonders! It has stopped spam almost dead in its tracks. I haven't seen a spammer in at least a couple of weeks. http://www.adminaddict.net/forum/community-forum-software/stopforumspam-works-4416/

 

havent had a spammer in ages

 

That blows,

I used to get about 20-30 spammers a day my self. Now I get about 1-2 a week if that. All I did was switched to vB, implemented recaptcha, and banned a crap load of BS email sufixs I found on SFS. This prevents anyone from using a email with a specific sufix, example, you list @porn.com in the banned email section and no one can use that email sufix on your site. Then on top of that, when ever I get bored, I cut and copy a list of IPs from Stopforumspam and place it in the banned IP section. Just make sure you don't accidentally ban popular emails like @Google.com, @Gmail.com etc etc. I did it once and had people emailing me up set that they had to make a new email account :o

Anyhow, I've got a list post up some where on AA....again, double check for good email sufixs like Ymail.com and gmail.com etc.

 

Overactor!!

lulz

(name that movie )