Whats with the rash of spam on DNF?

[Mark Talbot]

I have forums too, so I understand the issue.

But there seems to be a rash of "Gold Member" spammers last few days.

 

[Melly]

I don't know but that fkn shit pisses me off and needs to be removed from my thread.

 

[Gerry]

Plus, I think many are joining the forum to find out who buys domain names and then starts spamming our email boxes with offers to sell.

 

[Johnn]

In an effort to get more members to the community, we had a promotion last month for Gold members. (Adam can confirm this!)
The results are quite good as we have lot of new members and many of them upgraded to either Platinum or Exclusive.

There are some good, bad and ugly which we (Mods) have to deal with it when they come back and spam.
There is a price for everything.

If we missed them just report them and I will make sure they are dead in one shot!!!

Thanks,

 

[Jeroen]

I'm a mod at another forum where we have to deal with this every day. Some user accounts are created automatically and after they make a bunch of cr#p posts, add a signature in their link.

The good thing is that these are easy to recognize, the bad part is having to spend time to find and remove these users and their posts.

 

[Mark Talbot]

In my experience most all forum spammers are just bots that have the reg/login utility imprinted in it.

So every few months I just changup the reg/login system just enough to cause the bots to fail.

 

[Theo]

More proof that Chinese traffic is crap.

 

[Mark Talbot]

More proof that Chinese traffic is crap.

I block most all Chinese visitors from my sites. Especially Baidu bots as they just consume so much bandwidth scraping from my sites for no good reason.

 

[David G]

I block most all Chinese visitors from my sites. Especially Baidu bots as they just consume so much bandwidth scraping from my sites for no good reason.

Really? Exactly how is that done? I have spent lots of time asking my server provider how that is done and they always say impossible since there are tens of 1000s of Chinese IPs and the list is contantly changing too. They claim there is no way to block a specific country. In fact, there are a few other nations I would like to block if only it can be done.

 

[Mark Talbot]

Really? Exactly how is that done? I have spent lots of time asking my server provider how that is done and they always say impossible since there are tens of 1000s of Chinese IPs and the list is contantly changing too. They claim there is no way to block a specific country. In fact, there are a few other nations I would like to block if only it can be done.

Aside from specific domains or .cn extentions and known IP ranges (that are China-specific) blocked on my server, I block and redirect back to the source Baidu bots by virtue of the hostname of the bots. Of course it doesnt stop every last one, but I have significantly dropped my China traffic. I know of a great vB script that I use on my forums also that helps with this too at the php level. If I recall there is a WP add-on that accomplishes something similar. But I prefer to stop them at the point of request on my server first to limit bandwidth consumption.

 

[south]

A couple of thoughts:

Require moderator approval of the first x number of posts for new members,
or
Require mod approval of posts containing html for gold members, or maybe for their first x number of posts.
or
Perhaps easier - create a new (limited) membership level for members with under x number of posts, then elevate them to gold after they reach that number. Maybe a scrap metal level?

 

[Johnn]

It's ok.

It's hunting season so we use them as practice targets.
So far they are all dead after the first shot!!!

A couple of thoughts:

Require moderator approval of the first x number of posts for new members,
or
Require mod approval of posts containing html for gold members, or maybe for their first x number of posts.
or
Perhaps easier - create a new (limited) membership level for members with under x number of posts, then elevate them to gold after they reach that number. Maybe a scrap metal level?

 

[A D]

I also went in and deleted their posts and their accounts.

we are on the case.

Adam

 

[Anthony Ng]

Just for the record: there are quite a few DNForum members living in China right now, who are excellent buyers with deep pockets, and whom I have sold at least US$10,000 worth of domains to in the last while. Well, I sure am not the only one who can tell, that far away land is literally the only place on earth, where cash is still flying around, amidst our economic uncertainty (allow my understatement).

 

[dmyre]

In an effort to get more members to the community, we had a promotion last month for Gold members. (Adam can confirm this!)

What was the promotion. My brother has been wanting an account for a while...

 

[A D]

What was the promotion. My brother has been wanting an account for a while...

Tell him to register and email me his username to [email protected]

Adam

 

[Seanster]

Yeah, nothing sucks more then too much spam, it drivers the users on the fence, away never to come back. I haven't tried it, but there is something called spider spanker, a tool that blocks a lot of these bots and useless spiders from sucking up bandwidth, and in the case of WP, tons of mysql query server resources.

 

[Mark Talbot]

Stopforumspam,... best vb software add-on.

But I stopped using it when it started blocking legit users.

Right now, a totally non-standard reg format prevents many if not most bot regs.