Unusual amount of spammers in "Awaiting Activation"

peachrff · 2022-02-09 7:27 pm

During the past 2 weeks there have been several episodes of 30-100 potential members suddenly added into the "awaiting activation" area, all of whom who were spoilers. It happened every few days and then stopped but have had two episodes today.

One of today's were all from ONE IP, already determined as spam.

I am the forum "mom"/admin with little techy skils and my techy person is temporally unavailable.

I approve all new members however and screen them all.

Wanted to 1) alert you to ths strange new event and 2) ask if there is anything that may need doing at our end?

I have two photos if that would be helpful and someone can tell me how/where to attach.

Many thanks!

peach
realityfanforum.com

Alex Kemp · 2022-02-09 9:19 pm

Hi peachrff, welcome to SFS.

Photos need to be stored on a remote site. They can then be entered using the [ img ] tab. Not satisfactory, but this is an old forum & does not have a method to store photos for display.

I've run my own forum (started ~20 years ago) and I can promise you that what you describe is all "normal" (if you are willing to call spamming normal).

Our database (dB) is available precisely to stop spammers ever getting to sign on in your forums. I will not go into details (search elsewhere - best is a site for your precise type of forum software), but you can look at the Mods & Plugins link. Briefly, you need a plugin for your forum that hooks into the SFS dB & prevents known spammers from signing up. If you also want to be able to report spammers then you will also need an API Key, but you do not need that otherwise. It will certainly involve some time to get to understand what to do, but should not defeat even the ordinary user. Just a little work & experience.

Every forum software that I have investigated already has at least one plugin to do that for you. The main difficulty is finding one that is well maintained & responsive to users. Our own lists are very old, I'm afraid.

Good luck.

peachrff · 2022-02-09 10:44 pm

Thanks so much Alex!

I have been doing this for about 8 years now and this is definitively new within the last 1-2 weeks. Today was the 4th time I believe. Until now there has been only a handful of definite spammers SUGGESTED with most going straight to the NO WAY section lol. Certainly unlike today where there were many all with the same IP and all different usernames. Very odd. We all known if one IP has multiple usernames chances are good it is spam. The approved ones generally let 3-5 known spammers a day perhaps which is certainly not bad. These are all going to the suggested file and the number of spammers being suggested is about 10X normal. I am sure we have all the plugins because until a week or two ago all was well. I am hoping it is something y'all can check but will hopefully be able to get our plugins etc checked soon if that could be the issue.

SFS_awaiting_activation_3jpg.jpg?width=1920&height=1080&fit=bounds

SFS_awaiting_activation_4.jpg?width=1920&height=1080&fit=bounds

Alex Kemp · 2022-02-10 12:50 pm

Some (again, broad) advice to offer on what you have presented so far.

The main advice is to only rarely forum-ban purely based on either IP and/or username. The email address is the best means to stop spammers.

My own practice was to maintain two lists, one was of IPs obtained at new-user access from IP abuse sites & the second of IP / email / usernames from SFS. The first filter was IP-abuse and was operated at the firewall (extremely quick & low-load), and therefore was site-wide. The second filter was triggered at forum user-creation & was based entirely on email address; it was forum-wide.

The above scheme brought staggering levels of abuse down to a manageable level. All spammers were reported to SFS & thus also auto-blocked.

Your site-reports do not mention email-address and thus I do not know if your forum takes that into account. It needs to.

peachrff · 2022-02-18 4:11 pm

Thanks! Yes I check all members by IP/email/username.

Seems better now...only had 4 known spammers suggested today. '
Thanks for all the help!

#1 2022-02-09 7:27 pm

Unusual amount of spammers in "Awaiting Activation"

#2 2022-02-09 9:19 pm

Re: Unusual amount of spammers in "Awaiting Activation"

#3 2022-02-09 10:44 pm

Re: Unusual amount of spammers in "Awaiting Activation"

#4 2022-02-10 12:50 pm

Re: Unusual amount of spammers in "Awaiting Activation"

#5 2022-02-18 4:11 pm

Re: Unusual amount of spammers in "Awaiting Activation"

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