India/China and spammers

ico

Super Moderator
Staff member
I have no idea why our forum gets targeted by spammers from India and China.

I mean, reCAPTCHA was hacked - okay. This led to "flood registrations" of spammers (bots) from Russia. I removed reCAPTCHA from the forum registration process and added questions like "Name of the site is ____digit.com", "Write the fourth word of this sentence" et cetera.

Now I have changed questions to, "southern most point of Indian mainland", "capital of Czech republic" et cetera. But still "human" spammers keep on registering from India and China. Note: More 50% of the China is IP nuked by me. The moment I see a spammer has an IP from China, I immediately ban ~65000 IP addresses at once. But still they keep on coming and post things like Warcraft gold, Shopping handbags etc.

Regarding Indian spammers. These are advertisement morons. They post stuff like "MANAGEMENT INSTITUTE", "SEO", "HDFC banking..!" et cetera. Can't these morons understand what forums are for. Most Indian spammers have their email IDs like suyash.pandit11 at gmail.com, vikram.ahuja45, sneha.singh24. :| and even after getting banned, they keep on coming again and again. I honestly think that these are some call center guys who are being paid to spam.

95% of spammers use Gmail. If suyash.pandit11 gets banned, they will register again from suyash.pandit11+lol @gmail.com, suyash.pandit+123whatever etc. (Gmail feature. All mails get delivered to suyash.pandit11)

And then desi idiots register on forums with their mobile numbers as their handle IDs. 73589275923791 279275692753. Idiots all of them.

Then you also have newbies who keep on asking the same old question questions again and again. Please use Google.

Recently 5 IDs were registered from the same IP talking crap about 3D. A female ID asked a question, "can 3D glasses be used as sun glasses??" wtf?? and rest were spamming about 3D TVs. No idea why.

Then you have people registering who have no idea about how to ask a query and how to post in a forum. I'll be honest with all of you, these days I have resorted to deleting posts/accounts of new members who behave really "weird." I hope you understand what I mean by "really weird."

Now coming to the reason why have I created this thread. I need suggestions on how to control/end the above nonsense. ^^ All types of suggestions are welcomed.
 

Arsenal_Gunners

Human Spambot
Maybe a bit extreme,but not allowing the registrations through free email will solve this problem.Use the mail facility provided by your ISP/workplace to register.

redcafe does that: p.
 
OP
ico

ico

Super Moderator
Staff member
Exactly what I was thinking tbh but it is not realistic. I have seen many forums doing that. But I honestly feel you won't many Indians using non-free mail accounts.

RAWK does it too: p.

RAWK has one more additional mechanism. To view their registration page when their registration is ON, you need to know their passkey. You have to send an e-mail to some ID. You can send anything. That ID replies the passkey back to you instantly. (automated) Only then you can continue your registration.
 

thetechfreak

Legend Never Ends
Even I will get banned if free email not allowed :cry:
Set a automated email where we have to send a email with special code to receive registration details as a autoreply.
 

gagan007

Uhu, Not Gonna Happen!
why not start manual approval of members.you can involve super mods too.i know it is a burden but even now u are searching/deleting posts/ids, banning IPs etc.
 

raksrules

Youngling
I have a suggestion which is implemented on another popular forum. Moderate the first 5 posts of any new registered member. I know this can be a daunting task but may be efficient. Until a mod approves the post, it does not get reflected. Be it a post or a new thread by a newbie.

why not start manual approval of members.you can involve super mods too.i know it is a burden but even now u are searching/deleting posts/ids, banning IPs etc.

Approval of each and every member can be done but there is no way a mod can know if the member is legitimate or a spammer until he or she posts something which is not in interest of the community.
 

thetechfreak

Legend Never Ends
raksrules said:
I have a suggestion which is
implemented on another popular
forum. Moderate the first 5 posts of
any new registered member. I know
this can be a daunting task but may be
efficient. Until a mod approves the post, it does not get reflected. Be it a
post or a new thread by a newbie.
This seems interesting :D
wonder what will ico say :p
 

krishnandu.sarkar

Simply a DIGITian
Staff member
Hmm...right. I keep banning atleast 2-3 people each day because of this spam.

I think what raksrules said is a nice idea. We can moderate his 10 post.

And we have many mods here and all of them are active, so it would be really daunting task but personally I can look for manual approval of registrations.(Though this point wont work in case of a spammer, we can't identify the spammer by looking at his IP and ID only, I guess so)

Correct me if I'm wrong.
 

raksrules

Youngling
^^Thats the primary reason of moderating the posts rather than registrations. Spammers wont go to the level of making genuine relevant posts just to bypass the "first 5 posts limit" and then start posting spam. But yes random and automated registrations can be curbed my difficult captachas or answering queries etc etc
 

cyclops

Broken In
Hmm.. Now I can relate why Team-BHP tests the users creative writing skills for registration. Can that be implemented?
 

asingh

Aspiring Novelist
Two ways are do-able:

1. Keep the first 5 posts on moderation. Only moderators will see. After first 5 get approved, they move to normal status.
2. Upon ID creations, the user waits for moderation approval, then only they can append or create threads.
 

rhitwick

Democracy is a myth
ico, I'm not very much into spam and its working...neither I know what all measures TDF takes to stop it.

I found this site, is it any help?

Stop Forum Spam
 

Liverpool_fan

Sami Hyypiä, LFC legend
First of all to counter idiotic users (there are few with 1000+ posts as well), use the RAWK feature like "No New Topics for LFC". That way the idiots won't be able to create stupid new threads. This can be done by a new group for them I guess.

Spam users are more tricky, I'll second asingh's idea with respect to threads. Posts will be incredibly tough to moderate. It's better to let Report Function handle it all out.
Also don't let anyone below 20-30 posts be able to post links, let their links NOT be rendered. (or maybe any link they post will automatically make their post subject to mod approval, if that's possible).
 

abhijangda

Padawan
+1 to LFC_fan

5 posts moderated
no new threads till 10-15 posts.
no links till 20-30 posts

i don't think that it will be good idea to block creation of new threads till 10-15 post. What if this newuser is genuine and badly wants to post a new question, whose answer he requires urgently.
That will not be good idea.
 

Liverpool_fan

Sami Hyypiä, LFC legend
i don't think that it will be good idea to block creation of new threads till 10-15 post. What if this newuser is genuine and badly wants to post a new question, whose answer he requires urgently.
That will not be good idea.

Threads won't be blocked but subject to mod approval. If the mod finds it genuine he/she will approve it and it will show up.
 

MatchBoxx

the m0nk who sold his PC!
Assign captcha verification to the first 10-15 posts/threads of the new users...complex captcha! And block all Chinese IPs...
 

doomgiver

Warframe
i don't think that it will be good idea to block creation of new threads till 10-15 post. What if this newuser is genuine and badly wants to post a new question, whose answer he requires urgently.
That will not be good idea.

contact the mods? then we will know for sure that the guy is genuine.

also, he can always hijack a similar thread
 
OP
ico

ico

Super Moderator
Staff member
Moderating first 5 posts will be a very daunting task considering the fact we get around 50 registrations every day.

Is anyone in favour of only allowing registrations on weekends?
 
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