Spammer Hunt

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Moto
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Joined: Sun Aug 23, 2009 7:08 pm
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Got board today and deleted about 200 spammers.

I have had us protected for a long time so very few are able to post, but quite a few were still able to register.

I have deleted most of them.

I think I have the registration fixed for now too. (Other than the fact that it requires java to be enabled on the user end)
Stodge
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Joined: Sat Jun 02, 2012 3:54 pm
Location: Ottawa, Canada

Java may not fly given the recent security issues. People may have it disabled whether they know it or not.
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Moto
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True... but I have a feeling they will turn it back on because so many things require it. Registrations from real users does not seem to have taken a dramatic hit, but I will watch it.
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Moto
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Problem fixed. Turns the question to check boxes if javascript is not activated now rather than dragging things around.
SamirD
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I don't know if you use this already or not, but I use stopforumspam when I have an 'iffy' user that's registered to see if there's any past spammer activity. :)
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Moto
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Yep I use it. The best thing I have found so far is a nonstandard registration method.
SamirD
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I do the same. :) Genre specific questions weed out the baddies almost all the time. 8-)
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Moto
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Sortables CAPTCHA Plugin keeps out everything other than real people, and it uses a randomization algorithm so even if they crack your Genre specific question they can't setup an auto registration. I had that happen on this site once. I think we ended up gaining a few hundred members before I got it back under control. It was a PITA to deal with.

cloudflare is also very good for filtering traffic from countries you don't want to deal with.
SamirD
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Very interesting. I use a question/answer system on my vbulletin powered site. I've got almost 50 qa's loaded in, so it's pretty random by nature.

I made a note of cloudflare. Seems like quite an interesting product. I bet you have to use their dns servers though, huh?
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Moto
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Yes, they act as a pass-though.

If your site gets a reasonable amount of traffic it may not work for you. My sites are low enough load that I do not have a problem.

I've had a lot less trouble since I started using them as a traffic filter. I have quite a few none English speaking counties blocked.
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