#1 2019-12-12 2:45 pm

sagacity

Member

Registered: 2019-12-10

Posts: 1

Should spammer accounts be deleted?

My thought process had been if I identify an account as a spammer, I would keep their account and prevent them from logging in. The idea being that if I delete them, they could try to re-register - if they can't log in, they would be locked out and can't re-register the account.

Should I just delete them?

Snowhog

Member

From: Minnesota

Registered: 2012-09-09

Posts: 60

Website

Re: Should spammer accounts be deleted?

It's a personal choice. I delete them after confirming that they are registered here, and if they have posted spam on our site, adding those credentials here before doing so (deleting their account). Simply preventing an existing user account from logging in won't prevent them from re-registering (or attempting to) using different credentials.

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Administrator - Kubuntu Forums . Net
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Using Kubuntu Linux since March 23, 2007

kpatz

Member

Registered: 2008-10-09

Posts: 1,437

Re: Should spammer accounts be deleted?

I keep spammer accounts for a year after banning them.  Prevents them from re-registering under the same credentials.

Additionally, I modified my forum so that once an account is banned for spamming, the same email/IP can't be used to register any new account.  So it slows down re-registration attempts, unless they use entirely new credentials each time.  Once deleted, the IP/email can be used again (unless other banned accounts exist under the same credentials).

Last edited by kpatz (2019-12-12 10:41 pm)

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Spam happens when greed meets stupidity.

sklerder

Member

Registered: 2012-10-11

Posts: 336

Website

Re: Should spammer accounts be deleted?

Hi all !

My thought process had been if I identify an account as a spammer, I would keep their account and prevent them from logging in

If you have many spammer to ban on a day basis (say more than 5 per day), you are going to use too much information to store these bans, and to spend - too - much time to handle it ...
The fact of banning a nickname is not a good idea, as nicknames are not unique.
Banning by IP address or/and email is way better, but bots can generate fake email addresses and use proxies to hide their IP address, so, alone, it's not enough.

On my forum, after 7 years of existence, I banned only 2 bots, at the beginning of the forum existence, and deleted them after submitting at SFS.
I never had to ban since, so never had to wonder about deletion or not
On another forum I moderate, we ban users because of their behavior and/or their messages, and few spammers that managed to bypass the first security level ("human" questions).

I think it's better to detect spammers by technical ways (that's what I do), but it's another discussion, which should be in "The Tech Shop", as these information shouldn't be available in "public view" ...