I am Deleting Spammers Regularly. Latest is hilda4u

A new spammer tactic is to register but never post. Instead, they send out PM's to other members. So, please let me know anytime you get an inappropriate PM.

Thanks Andy....as if your plate wasnt full  with us all already...that the spammers too came along....
I agree with Manals thoughts....what do they achive by doing all this? Dont they have anything better to do?
Madhavi

They don't quit. Hilda4u tried to join again today. On an average day I am rejecting 2-3 spammers. Again, if any do slip through, please notify me immediately.

  Agree

Andy ,
you're doing a good job, you're keeping a good eye on them  ... but if some one slipped , sure , i will let u know if i find any ..


Umair

Sorry for the spam that got posted earlier today. I don't think any of the posts were up for long before I discovered and deleted them. This "member" had joined last January before I started using stricter methods to filter out spammers. I am trying to get new members to fill out bios so that they can get approved, but spammers are even using some simple bios so it makes it even more difficult to tell who is real. It is unlikely that anyone will be approved for membership without adding a real bio when they register.

Unfortunately, this does mean that occasionally a real person may be rejected. If they use a public computer, that computer's IP address may be listed as infected or a spammer and the prospective member will not be approved, unless a real bio is presented. If you know any real person who has been rejected, tell them to email me about it at andy@thalpal.com

One of the worst results of this is I spend so much time trying to determine whether or not new members are real people, that it has cut into the time I have available to the group.

Thanks Andy for all of your efforts, please let us know if we can help in this.

manal

So far this month, 185 "members" have registered. Only 23 have been approved so far. The vast bulk of new registrations are spammers. I am trying hard to keep them out. However, I am also running the risk of not approving someone because they used the same public computer that was used by someone else for purposes of spamming. If anyone is not approved and is legitimate, please email me at andy@thalpal.com

In the first 8 days of January, there have been 146 member registrations. Only 9 were approved. The rest are bots sent around the internet with the purpose of joining and then infecting forums and/or member computers. Most of the current group originate in China or Russia. The time taken to research IP addresses is eating up my free time. I have changed the registration agreement to state that you will not be accepted as a member unless a bio is provided during registration. The notice is in a very large font, so it should not be missed by anyone. Because I have no choice but to reject anyone not leaving a bio, please do inform me if you or anyone you know has been rejected, but who are indeed real people with some interest in thalassemia.

I am sorry to hear that Andy,wish i could help.

In the first 8 days of January, there have been 146 member registrations. Only 9 were approved. The rest are bots sent around the internet with the purpose of joining and then infecting forums and/or member computers. Most of the current group originate in China or Russia. The time taken to research IP addresses is eating up my free time. I have changed the registration agreement to state that you will not be accepted as a member unless a bio is provided during registration. The notice is in a very large font, so it should not be missed by anyone. Because I have no choice but to reject anyone not leaving a bio, please do inform me if you or anyone you know has been rejected, but who are indeed real people with some interest in thalassemia.

Are you using a captcha on the registration page - that should usually eliminate 95% of the spammers automatically on a low commercial value site like ours. I really like the captcha being used by Wikipedia - it is such a blurry design that I think even captcha breakers would find it uneconomical. BTW, I added our forum to the Thalassemia page on Wiki.

cheers

We use the captcha system set at its highest level. This morning we had 18 new registrations and only one was a real person. Many of the IP addresses registering for this site have over 200 entries on the Stop Forum Spam website. When I have the time, I am banning specific IP addresses and email addresses from even registering. The ban log shows repeated and ongoing attempts to register from the blocked IP's, so blocking does help some, but we are still getting at least two dozen bot registrations daily. I am hoping that as I use the new tactic of banning IP's that eventually I will see some reduction in the numbers.

What amazes me is that spammers find it worthwhile. Who replies to these things?

I still can not understand what is the benefit these spammers are aimig for if they are no interested in the site !!!!!

The spammer registrations are mostly not even real people. They are spambots that troll the internet, registering for every forum they can. Once they can post, that forum will be overrun with posts linking to sites selling any sort of junk. It has become epidemic the past two months. If you check the stats page, you will see that we have already had over 300 registrations in January and the month isn't even half over. Almost all of these registrations are bogus. This has broke the previous month record which was just set last month. Most of these registrations come from Russia and China and can be identified on sites that identify and record email and IP addresses of spammers. When you wonder why the net is running so slow, keep these massive spam attacks in mind. They create a lot of internet traffic and for no good. I hope it changes soon.

The latest on this issue is that I have developed a physical injury to my elbow from the repetitive motion of copying and pasting IP addresses into the stop forum spam sites and into our ban list. Over the past 3 months this issue has developed in my elbow and I could not figure out what I was doing different at the computer that would cause it. In addition, it has grown worse to the point that it is interrupting my sleep. What has changed during this period is the sheer volume of registrations to this group. In January, we have well over 600 new registrations and over 600 of these were rejected. That's about 20 per day. In the past couple weeks I have been adding bans to IP addresses of spammers, creating even more copy and paste repetitive motion. On one hand, this has stopped many repeat offenders from registering again, as noted in the ban log, but it is also creating more of this motion that is hurting my elbow. I will be talking to my chiropractor about this tomorrow to see if he has any suggestions to combat the pain.

I don't know what to do. When a prospective member registers but does not fill out a bio as required but also does not appear on any of the spammer lists, I go even further and Google the email address and even check them on Facebook to see if they might be real people. There have been people even this past week who were approved because I took these extra steps. But each extra step is causing my elbow even more harm. I cannot make the "fill out a bio" message anymore prominent in our registration agreement than I already have. The font is huge and can't be missed but still people are not always filling out a bio. If you want to see the reg agreement, just click on registration when you are not signed in. Look at this and tell me if the statement about a bio could somehow be missed. If anyone has any idea on how to get bios 100% of the time, please let me know. I am not able to change the layout of the page so the statement does have to be located where it is, but it is very visible.

What do I do? Do I reject every member who doesn't fill out a bio? If I do that, then some people who need help will not be able to get it. I don't find this acceptable. Any ideas?