Spammers

[troy]

Some of you may have noticed the new user accounts and posts from spammers lately. Unfortunately, the attacks are on the rise big time. I've been manually deleting multiple spammer accounts every day.

I am running the latest, most-secure version of the forum software (phpBB). So I'm doing my best to stay on top of it. The problem now is that these are no longer completely automated attempts. There are now humans who create the accounts--taking the time to manually type in the CAPTCHA and reply to the activation email. That is, humans creating legitimate accounts. They then, I assume, sell these accounts in bulk to spammers for pennies each. There are plenty of places in the world where people will work for a few cents an hour.

The good thing is that the pattern is the account is created first, then it is days or even weeks before the spammer account is used to post. So if I catch them on creation, I can delete them before they are ever used.

I've got nothing better to do. Wheeee!

[troy]

Late last night, I removed all spammer accounts including the ones pending activation--there were about a dozen.

This morning--so just overnight--I deleted 3 new activated spammer accounts and 7 pending activation. I'm one man against about 1 billion jack-holes. Am I the only one alarmed by the number of people living on this planet who apparently have no integrity at all--no sense of right and wrong?

[safiri]

I have deleted 3 or 4 in the past week, as well.

Ugg.

And there is one more that I am about to delete. But read your post first.

[reddof]

Not sure how frequently legitimate accounts are created or whether you have much control over the creation process, but one thing I've seen on some boards is to have people enter a short description of why they want to register and then have an admin approve the account. The paragraph of text is to help gage whether it appears to be a legit request.

As long as there is a manageable number of real accounts being created then this can significantly cut back the fake accounts. If you have other admins able to help the approval process then it shouldn't put too much of a delay for people creating real accounts.

I'm sure you don't want to create too much extra work for yourself, but it could end up being easier than having to clean up after them.

[TL*5]

We do like Reddof explains. It helps, to at least weed them out.