Up until 1 April, the message board I run was virtually spam-free. We took very strict measures to prevent bot spam; among them IP and email block lists, custom fonts and backgrounds with the captcha with vBulletin 3.6, and anti-bot mods such as Is Check. As far as blocking bot spam, we've pretty much implemented all the publicized best practices that are out there, along with some tricks of our own.
At the start of the month, though, spam from humans that have manually completed the registration process exploded. Where we used to get maybe one human spammer every week or every other week, it's now every day; often two or three times a day. The majority of spammers seem to be from India; Gujarat state, Delhi, or Mumbai mainly. There's also a sharp increase in profile/silent spamming. Nigerian Nokia spam has also made a return. We used to block all IPs from Nigeria, along with those of European, Israeli and Middle Eastern satellite ISPs. Now, Nigerians are using proxies to spam their "LEGITIMATE BUSINESSES BASED IN THE UK". (Don't Nigerian keyboards have caps lock keys that can be turned off?)
Has anyone else noticed a noticeable increase in the amount of outsourced manual spam on their forums in recent weeks? We're considering blocking all IP addresses in India if this keeps up; most who join our message board from there are either spammers, users who register and never return, or one-post wonders who ask questions with such a broad scope a concise answer is practically impossible. I'd like to have more legit Indian users, but with a couple of rare exceptions, nobody from India joins the site to be a long-term member. We also installed the MonkeyStop Keyword and URL Moderation and New Registrant Analyzer plugins.
At the start of the month, though, spam from humans that have manually completed the registration process exploded. Where we used to get maybe one human spammer every week or every other week, it's now every day; often two or three times a day. The majority of spammers seem to be from India; Gujarat state, Delhi, or Mumbai mainly. There's also a sharp increase in profile/silent spamming. Nigerian Nokia spam has also made a return. We used to block all IPs from Nigeria, along with those of European, Israeli and Middle Eastern satellite ISPs. Now, Nigerians are using proxies to spam their "LEGITIMATE BUSINESSES BASED IN THE UK". (Don't Nigerian keyboards have caps lock keys that can be turned off?)
Has anyone else noticed a noticeable increase in the amount of outsourced manual spam on their forums in recent weeks? We're considering blocking all IP addresses in India if this keeps up; most who join our message board from there are either spammers, users who register and never return, or one-post wonders who ask questions with such a broad scope a concise answer is practically impossible. I'd like to have more legit Indian users, but with a couple of rare exceptions, nobody from India joins the site to be a long-term member. We also installed the MonkeyStop Keyword and URL Moderation and New Registrant Analyzer plugins.
Comment