India/China and spammers

[ico]

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]

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.

[ico]

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]

Even I will get banned if free email not allowed
Set a automated email where we have to send a email with special code to receive registration details as a autoreply.

[gagan007]

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]

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.

Originally Posted by gagan007

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]

Originally Posted by raksrules

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
wonder what will ico say

[krishnandu.sarkar]

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]

^^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]

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

[asingh]

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]

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]

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]

why not increase number of moderators??

[doomgiver]

+1 to LFC_fan

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

[abhijangda]

Originally Posted by doomgiver

+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]

Originally Posted by abhijangda

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]

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

[doomgiver]

Originally Posted by abhijangda

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

[ico]

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?

[furious_gamer]

^^ Thats really not a good idea. May be, a strong captcha like re-captcha will reduce the spam? I am using for my site and it's rock solid.

I go with LFC_Fan's suggestion, coz we have plenty of mods at any given time in a day.

[ico]

Originally Posted by furious_gamer

May be, a strong captcha like re-captcha will reduce the spam?

reCAPCTHA can be easily by passed. Don't know how, but it isn't *strong*.

[furious_gamer]

^^ But still better than what we are having now.

[gagan007]

Nope furious, reCAPCTHA is bad. Having simple questions/answers is better. I have experienced it.

Also, please note that the problem does not lie with registration. Just like us or genuine users spammers can also create account because they are real human beings. The problem is to restrict them from spreading spam.

[furious_gamer]

^^ In that case, post-by-post moderation is required.

[ico]

I have added questions and really good ones.

QnA enabled for till 10 posts.

[krishnandu.sarkar]

Let's see..!! Otherwise mods are always there at the backend to refine it out

[thetechfreak]

You can have a seperate set of mods for the approval.
@ico
can i make another profile so I can chech it ?

[ico]

Originally Posted by Liverpool_fan

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.

I am in support of this. Is anyone else?

Originally Posted by thetechfreak

@ico
can i make another profile so I can chech it ?

Just log-out and click the registration button. Keep on refreshing it to change questions. Those type of questions will be asked to new members till they reach a post count of 10.

[furious_gamer]

I am in. But simply doing this by keeping in mind the past clashes with that user is not gonna work. Mods need to be genuine and if they fins he is a spammer, he can do that.