Delete or Disapprove?

JayneW · 2010-01-11 5:46 pm

I've got new registrations on the forum I manage set to "admin approval required"

Probably one out of every 30 new users is an actual person.

I sometimes see the same user names and email addresses, spammers that I have deleted before, on the "pending approval" list.

Is it better to delete them or to set them to "disapproved"?

insektenfang · 2010-01-11 10:22 pm

Ban the IP then delete.

TVwas.com · 2010-01-12 10:03 am

I've been banning:
username
email (sometimes the whole domain: *@domain.com)
IP outside my home country.

I've been reluctant to ban IPs inside my home country, for fear they may actually be a Google or similar IP. But now I may have to start checking the whois on the IP and ban repeat offender IPs that are not major IPs being spoofed.

Then I delete the account.

JayneW · 2010-01-12 10:41 am

OK thanks. I'm really happy to have found this resource, very helpful!

rhyfedd · 2010-01-13 7:38 pm

I think it will always depend on the nature and location of your board as well as the size. Ours is small but nevertheless had 5000 spam memberships just before I took over.

I've banned some whole countries which have sent us thousands of spammers but not a single member.

We've never received a genuine member with a .info domain so I banned that.

I ban some whole IPs where this site shows that IP goes back a while. I've banned some part IPs belonging to a country where we never receive members.

We also have gmail banned at the moment which is saving an enormous amount of time. Not so very long ago some Forums used to ban all webmail addresses and I figure they can always make another through hotmail or something. We have a query email address but we've never received a single message from someone genuinely trying to join but finding themselves blocked.

I also banned as wildcards a large number of the common elements of the email addresses and usernames. Even after a year I still see those elements in the submitted spam.

I don't do much with usernames as there are so many different ways to spell Viagra I'd be there for ever and the names also don't tend to be repeated much. I note there are a couple of groups now using 'real-looking' names so I just ban that and the email.

We're all different but I hope some of that helps you Jayne.

Last edited by rhyfedd (2010-01-13 7:40 pm)

JayneW · 2010-01-13 7:43 pm

That's great information, rhyfedd.

I'll have to check with our engineers to see if I have any other options than to ban an individual from their profile, or to ban by IP. Being able to ban a domain or partial IP would really help.

Thanks.

insektenfang · 2010-01-14 12:59 pm

rhyfedd wrote:

I think it will always depend on the nature and location of your board as well as the size. Ours is small but nevertheless had 5000 spam memberships just before I took over.

Open registration I'd guess? Which frankly is like sending out invitation cards to spammers. A custom question on registration and admin validation of accounts is sufficient to stop all but the most determined of spammers.

rhyfedd wrote:

I've banned some whole countries which have sent us thousands of spammers but not a single member.
We've never received a genuine member with a .info domain so I banned that.
I ban some whole IPs where this site shows that IP goes back a while. I've banned some part IPs belonging to a country where we never receive members.

Your choice, but it depends how parochial your board is.

rhyfedd wrote:

We also have gmail banned at the moment which is saving an enormous amount of time. Not so very long ago some Forums used to ban all webmail addresses and I figure they can always make another through hotmail or something. We have a query email address but we've never received a single message from someone genuinely trying to join but finding themselves blocked.

This practise will in all probability lose your board genuine members. Forcing potential members to set up new addresses in order to register is adding an unnecessary layer of difficulty. I would certainly think twice about joining a board that bans a widely used email service and forces me to use another.

Additionally, if a new member does bother to create a new email account with a different provider, that account is likely to lie fallow. In other words, the member will never use the account again and will not receive any board email - PM notification, subscribed threads etc. This is of relevance to everyone, but particularly to boards with a commercial interest.

rhyfedd · 2010-01-14 5:58 pm

At that stage it was open registration, as it had been for five years, but also with an absent admin!

Jayne's problem was more about preventing them returning and I think she knows about the rest.

I don't think it's parochial in a negative sense to ban a country which in 6 years has given not a single member but at one stage gave us 30-40 spammers every day! As I said it depends on the nature of the board.

As I also said, we have an email address for queries. We haven't received a single query.

If people don't read email accounts that's their problem - we can't cover every eventuality and I'm sure fallow accounts exist in any case, whether gmail or not. I think most people already have more than one email address and especially hotmail. It would affect someone doing a password request, but we haven't received any queries about that either. We have very very few existing members with gmail addresses and so far as I know they would still be able to receive emails from us - it's not something we do anyway.

It's not so long since a very large board I was Admin on wouldn't accept any sort of webmail, so it's not a totally bizarre decision. I didn't make it, but it has saved us masses of time in the past year and I've been happy to go along with it since I took over the checking and see the gmail addresses on the front page here.

Perhaps you didn't mean it in a hostile way, but I'm not sure why you wanted to take my post apart like that. I merely said, as Jayne was asking for suggestions, what I do and I emphasised that. In the case of our board, banning whole IPs from certain countries would be more likely to cause problems but all boards are different. What I've been doing works for me.

Last edited by rhyfedd (2010-01-14 6:05 pm)

insektenfang · 2010-01-14 7:02 pm

Hostile, no and I apologise if it came across that way. However, (and this is not meant to appear hostile either) I believe the advice concerning webmail services in particular to be ill-conceived and potentially detrimental to anyone who administers their board in such a way.

rhyfedd · 2010-01-15 9:14 pm

That's a relief. I can't contribute to any of the technical talk, so wanted to try to help Jayne.

None of the information on this board is intended to be used willy-nilly, including the entire data base. I don't do anything without careful checking here and we have a fall-back email account. Anyone who seriously wants to contribute has that option. I don't know anyone who uses messageboards who only has one account to start with.

I have no qualms in banning domains such as 'buythisorthat.com' or 'lesbianhotpictures.info' - or as I said a few countries who in five years didn't give us a single member but in 15 months have sent us thousands of spammers. I know I'm not alone in banning some of them.

Sending emails from the board isn't affected in the way you suggest, if we needed to send them. We have about 3 existing gmail members. I'm sure we have far more 'fallow' accounts than that.

I've reduced the spammers from about 40 a night to about 1 a day just using the info here and the ban filters and there hasn't been any detrimental effect.

I wouldn't risk just banning automatically a whole IP without checking things like where it came from, how long and consistently it had been used; I wasn't able to get into a board I administered for a week from work until the network IP changed away from one that had been banned and I wouldn't have been able even to see a 'Help' email address. Some are from networks (behind a firewall I think?) and everyone on that network would be banned. It's expecially risky with one particularly big ISP because they operate on some sort of (cache?) system. At one stage on another board banning one of their numbers caused periodic problems for about 400 members for a week or so until we discovered the cause.

But if it works for some then that's up to them to decide.

They were just suggestions of what's worked for me and they're therefore not 'ill-conceived'.

Last edited by rhyfedd (2010-01-16 7:42 pm)

JayneW · 2010-01-16 8:06 pm

You know, this is rather funny. I had been thinking about what you said about banning domains. I was thinking, "well surely we have no legitimate members with a .ru email address", and was planning to ban that, if I could figure out how. So I filtered the member list and pick out any alreaady approved members with a .ru email address. I was surprised to see there are actually four, none of which have been active for a while. I was even more surprised when I looked at their posts, and found they were legitimate, contributing members. They just fell by the wayside along with a lot of our membership when we switched to new software in 2007. So it just goes to show, you can't assume anything.

rhyfedd · 2010-01-19 10:51 pm

Of course. I never do. Every board is different. But it seemed as though you'd been looking at the patterns, as I did early on.

I hope you find what works for you. If you do just ban the IP, the spammers will have a new IP virtually before they're deleted, so I think it's best to vary your methods and just keep plugging any holes you can as they arise, whatever way suits you.

I submitted two this morning and in each case banned something different as a result.

insektenfang · 2010-01-20 7:40 am

rhyfedd wrote:

If you do just ban the IP, the spammers will have a new IP virtually before they're deleted...

If you don't ban the IP, the same bot will register again and again and again and again.... ad infinitum.

#1 2010-01-11 5:46 pm

Delete or Disapprove?

#2 2010-01-11 10:22 pm

Re: Delete or Disapprove?

#3 2010-01-12 10:03 am

Re: Delete or Disapprove?

#4 2010-01-12 10:41 am

Re: Delete or Disapprove?

#5 2010-01-13 7:38 pm

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#6 2010-01-13 7:43 pm

Re: Delete or Disapprove?

#7 2010-01-14 12:59 pm

Re: Delete or Disapprove?

#8 2010-01-14 5:58 pm

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#9 2010-01-14 7:02 pm

Re: Delete or Disapprove?

#10 2010-01-15 9:14 pm

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#11 2010-01-16 8:06 pm

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#12 2010-01-19 10:51 pm

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#13 2010-01-20 7:40 am

Re: Delete or Disapprove?

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