Trolls

[Iwrite]

I deal with trolls and also with internet stalkers a fair bit on a message board I am involved with. Just wondered what others do with trolls.(Including the funny stuff). We ban and ban and ban and probably ban some innocent people along the way as anyone using aol re registers as someone else.

What I find wierd though is after a while, no matter what handle they use, you know it is them.

I have emails from aol on banning. They say you can't, but I woud love to get hold of some info I once found that I can no longer find on how to do it. It IS possible -but it means locking out a wide range as far as I can remember.

Lately we had someone who , in an effort not to be themselves posted problems that he/she/it/that knew would hook in everyone who didn't know what the admin knew.

Iwrite

[MrFishGuy]

Does the message board have the option of requiring an email address to register? This way you can set up email confirmation for the board where they have to click on the link from the email to complete registration.

If they have to use a valid email, it may cut bakc on their registering with many names.

[Peter Cornstalk]

Does anyone know if there is a list of email domains that someone can aquire that has all the email services that offer free email and email forwarding? That would be nice to have, just ban a bunch of those domains and that would make it even harder.

It is probably insurmountable?

[2by4]

It's problematic banning yahoo, hotmail, gmail, and the other big ones because that' what a lot of people actually use for their primary email address.

But if you just add email confirmation, and check the ips of banned users, ban the ips too, it starts making it harder and harder on the trolls/spammers etc to sign up, and eventually it just gets to be too much of a bother.

don't interact in any way, by the way, with people you've determined to be trolls and spammers, they tend to be very immature, and defensive, and if you fuel their fire they will just get more and more petty, but if you just delete their postings, their user name, ban their ip, their email, without saying a word, it doesn't give them anything to react to, it's just a fact of life in that case.

[AlexMiles]

>no matter what handle they use, you know it is them

Yeah :)

They have the same spelling mistakes, the same turns of phrase and the same preoccupations. Its really really easy, although people who can't spot them think you are some kind of psychic genius, which is hilarious.

Their handles are similar too. I don't think they can help it.