Problems With BS Spam Signups

[Nuggetdigger]

hey guys and gals.

ive got a problem. my website is hammered quite often with the "spam" signups ( people signing up and putting some BS "blog" or "porn" or "gambling" homepage up)

is there a mod thats easy install that i can put in that wileliminate this stuff>?

id rather not have to go in and modify a ton of stuff as last time i did that it took me a week to get my page backup correctly.

[edited by: rogerd at 1:20 am (utc) on June 21, 2006]
[edit reason] No specifics or URLs, please. [/edit]

[rogerd]

Welcome to WebmasterWorld, Nuggetdigger. Can you turn on image verification? What kind of software are you using?

Welcome to WebmasterWorld!

[spaceylacie]

Nuggetdigger, I'm having the same problem recently with my phpBB board and do have image verification in place. It's my first forum site and just over a year old, so I'm new to it too.

To anyone who knows, doesn't image verification mean that it's an actual person signing up?

[rogerd]

Some image verification systems have been cracked sufficiently well to allow automated signups. In addition, it's not entirely impossible that low-cost humans could do this, too. How many signups are you getting?

[moishe]

I have been deleting about 4 or 5 of these a day for months now, blocking the use of .ru based email addresses slowed it a bit, now I am seeing mostly gmail addresses on them.
At first, I only deleted them if the posted a junk website in their profile, then I learned about sleepers...
Now, I delete any new signup that does not post on my board within 24 hours or ASAP if they include a junk website in their profile.

[aeiouy]

May I suggest your over-zealousness to rid your site of spam sleepers is hurting your ability to have users come back later?

Removing everyone who does not post in 24 hours is going to seriously hurt your ability to grow your forums in the long term. I may register with a forum one day and look around and then come back 2 months later and want to post.

While it is a bother to have these spammers and to chase them down... it is not worth losing users over, so I think you might want to re-evaluate the effect of your strategy on people using your site.

Do you always post in the first 24 hours to a forum you join? I have probably registered on 1000+ forums in my life, and I imagine the number I posted on in the first 24 hours was well under 5% of those.

The second time I came back and my account did not work, I would think it odd and re-register. The third time I would think your forums broken and never come back again.

[buksida]

I removed the "website" box in the signup form which has stopped all the manual spammers.

The bots still get around this though.

Agree with deleting accounts that do have spammy websites or sigs though, worked for me.

Also you can ban certain email addresses, .info, .ru etc. I find they come in cycles which would indicate automated activity.

Of course we do get the occasional muppet that registers with a genuine account and posts 3 huge paragraphs keyword loaded and linked back to his site which has nothing to do with the forum subject.