"WholeSale" Spam Posts

[Fergal]

I've been having a lot of problems over the last few days with members registering with the user names "Wholesale..." something or other on my business forum. Once they register they start about 20 spam threads all over the forum.

My forum is on VB 3.8.4
It has IS Bot from vb.org installed and running
We require email verification
reCaptcha is used for member registration

I've been permanently banning the members and adding their IP's to the banned IP lists. But they / he / she / it (I don't know if it's a bot or not) keeps coming back and making about 20 spam posts on the forum.

The IP's I've banned include;

17.26.211.234
117.26.113.56
117.26.211.135
117.26.208.229
117.26.208.162

Has anyone else been experiencing similar spam?

What can I do to stop it? I'd prefer not do anything that would make the forum less user-friendly for new and genuine members.

Thanks!

I wasn't sure if this thread should go here or in the Managing your Community section, sorry if I picked the wrong area.

[Jake Bunce]

recaptcha is very effective. They might be human spammers. There isn't much you can do about those other than to manually moderate them.

[Floris]

My experience shows that reCAPTCHA is very much so not effective. And I have 6 months of statistics to show so.

Spam has mostly stopped (even human verification) when we went to 3.8.4, reCAPTCHA, removed features from users with 0 posts, and installed vbstopforumspam (official stopforumspam mod on vborg).

It is a shame how many spammers are ruining people their community causing the owners to invest time, money, resources and staff hours into cleaning things up and maintaining a site. Nobody in the world cares about their spam msgs, but they invest so much time into continuously abusing people their property. I can't wait for the day where we can sue these people for damages due to some new global anti spam law. But they contribute to the economy, so that won't ever happen.

vbstopforumspam plugin from vborg, .. wins (so far).

[rugby]

may be you should keep registration for the moderation or email activation, this can reduce spam.

[lim (x³-7x²) = ∞]

add to block (admin cp - banning)

117.26.

I reccomend you to use Questions/Answers human check, if you have non english community - you can use simple question in your language.

You can also grep his ip in apache logs to see how he is working, may be you can ban him by user agent or other condition in htaccess

[Fergal]

Thanks everyone for your replies.

add to block (admin cp - banning)

117.26.
...

How broad would this be? For example would it stop everyone from China registering at my forum? That's something I wish to avoid.

Thanks!

[beishe8]

How broad would this be? For example would it stop everyone from China registering at my forum? That's something I wish to avoid.

Don't forget to include Ukraine,Poland,Russia,US,etc. as well !

[lim (x³-7x²) = ∞]

it will ban only one isp or hoster, you need to check your websites logs for this ip - if you didnt have any other visitors from 117.26. except this bot - there will be no problem

[Tweaky]

Search Admincp -> Users -> Search IP Addresses for that range. See how many non-spammers (if any) show up.

FYI vBStopForumSpam is an awesome mod. I personally use that as well as another mod that prevents a human from hitting the register button less than every 15 seconds. For a person, it's no big deal because it takes more than 15 seconds to register. If I see in the vBStopForumSpam someone attempting to register every 5 seconds, I know it's a bot (aside from the mod itself stopping them of course).

[Floris]

may be you should keep registration for the moderation or email activation, this can reduce spam.

Yeah, using 'moderation' to approve new registrations costs 5x as much as work as banning the proven spam users. With 250 to 500 registrations a day, of which 75% are spam, using moderation is not even a feature you want to consider.

[Fergal]

Thanks everyone for your heklpful replies. The problem appears to have gone away. The IP addresses I blocked must have been enough or maybe they just gave up.

No doubt a new spamming problem will rear its ugly head soon and I'll revert back to this thread and try the tips I haven't implemented already.