Mail.ru (and other domains) banned from forum registration

[Xepher]

Due to the stupid-high amount of spam coming from mail.ru, I've banned all forum registrations using that domain for email. If you want a legitimate account, and you happen to use that for your mail, then let me now. My email can be found without looking too hard.

[Xepher]

Sheesh, at this rate, I'm gonna have to ban all of Russia.

[Xepher]

And apparently bans don't do anything except insure I get an email titled "Banned email detected." How useless!

[Xepher]

Hmm... found that there IS a setting for "allow banned email" that was set to true. That's the default, and apparently they forgot to write a way to change it into the admin interface for this forum. Playing in the raw database let me change it though. Hopefully we'll get no more spam posts from mail.ru now.

[Munerift]

...but I was looking forward to a new friend! *fake sniffle*

[Xepher]

Dag fracking nab it! It still didn't work. Even with the config setting. I found the code for the registration and tweaked it. Basically told it to skip checking the config option and just assume that banned emails are NEVER allowed. (I mean, isn't that the point?) I tested it myself, and I got a message that my email was banned. Should do it this time. *Crosses fingers*

[Xepher]

Well, I've had to ban quite a few other domains now as well. Spammers suck! If you're trying to register and your domain has been banned, you can email me directly and explain. I can then allow you to create a user if needbe.

[Xepher]

Oh, and if you're signing up, make sure to set all your information accurately. One of the signs of spambots is that they get the wrong timezone for their location, and I look for such things. There really should be no people coming from Howland Island. :-)

[otrstf]

...not even Amelia Earhart?

[Xepher]

"She's dead, Jim."

Otherwise, I'd make an exception. :-)

[cha0s]

This isn't the first I've seen about mail.ru. I wonder why it's going unchecked like that for so long.. =/

[Xepher]

Well, looks like we're getting another bout of spammers though. I've been deleting accounts/posts, so if you don't visit regularly, you probably don't see them. I'm trying to figure out a solution for this. The problem is that I don't think we're dealing with bots, but rather cheap labor. As such, the things that can easily defeat a computer program (like image tests) don't work. The only "weakness" I can think to exploit is that the majority of these spam hirelings don't speak fluent english. As such, I can imagine doing a sort of super-complicated instruction set for sign-up, requiring people to think about a bunch of double negatives, and pick things based on uncommon words.

EX: A picture array with checkboxes. Some showing kittens, some showing puppies, and other little fuzzy things. Instructions would read. "Please don't avoid clicking on the pictures that aren't of felis familiaris." Which should be enough to short-circuit most non-native speakers. Of course, that can probably screw it up for a few legit people as well. Thoughts?

[Aetre]

on the vgc forums we have a nice and simple way of doing this: IP bans.

edit: also i still think these are bots, and they're just hacking around registration by exploiting some back door. the only reason i say this is that cheap labor would not be assigned to a relatively small forum like this; cheap labor would go straight to the largest forums on the web. the only time small sites get spammed is by plug-and-runners, which these are not, and bots.

editedit: have you dl'ed the latest security update from PunBB? it's from around May or so...

[Databits]

IP Bans can't work, you can bypass it with ease usign proxy

[Xepher]

Yeah, these spams are from a different IP every time. I've even been banning entire domains (like mail.ru) for nearly every one of these. Neither seem to help. When you get to "spammer@free-meds08.com" and "spammer@cheap-med09.net" and such, it pretty much goes on forever. :-)

However, they may still be bots. You'd just think that if they were bots, we'd get the exact same message more often, and that it would be a little better on the spelling and such, as it's NOT being written on the fly. I do have a secret (and rather easy) idea to catch most of these. We'll see if I can work it into the punBB code though.