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Spamtastic
Jun. 20th, 2011 08:16 pmAs moderator of a PHP-based writing forum, I am finding that more and more of my time is being spent trying to head off spammers. Many of these people create nonsensical accounts with no intention of participating or even reading the forum content. Instead they fill the account profile with spam links and abandon it. So I get to delete these spurious accounts, in increasing numbers all the time.
A few do go ahead and post junk messages containing phishing attempts or spurious links to phony sites selling fake drugs or forged designer items or whatever. These I get to delete, and ban the poster who doesn't care because next time he'll come back and create a new account anyway.
Yes, we have a captcha and require e-mail validation. They manage to get past both.
They don't quit, even after being banned. One IP address that I blocked last October has since tried to reconnect or re-register an account no less than 1,022 times as of today.
I realize that this is the net equivalent of random graffiti in urban areas, but I find that equally reprehensible and pointless. What is the matter with human society that it produces such stupid, moronic, and anti-social behavior in such quantities?
Complaining to the offending sites' providers is useless. Most of them ignore you, or deny that there is anything going on, or even tell you flat out "We don't care as long as they pay their bill." I've been tracking offending sites and addresses for years, and note that certain nations seem to account for the bulk of it. At the present time, Russia and Poland seem to originate more than half of the spam I see, though in the past most of it came from France, Italy, and Brazil. Before that, it was Korea, China, and other southeast Asian countries. E-mail addresses used for validation are often of the free type created on gmail, hotmail, or similar networks, so blocking an e-mail domain isn't a good idea because there are likely legitimate users on those as well. The latest increase in spam attacks has increased the number of spurious accounts generated by probably a factor of ten daily. This amounts to a DOS attack and makes me wonder if it is intentionally being directed against us. Other forums running the same software don't seem to have this problem.
A few do go ahead and post junk messages containing phishing attempts or spurious links to phony sites selling fake drugs or forged designer items or whatever. These I get to delete, and ban the poster who doesn't care because next time he'll come back and create a new account anyway.
Yes, we have a captcha and require e-mail validation. They manage to get past both.
They don't quit, even after being banned. One IP address that I blocked last October has since tried to reconnect or re-register an account no less than 1,022 times as of today.
I realize that this is the net equivalent of random graffiti in urban areas, but I find that equally reprehensible and pointless. What is the matter with human society that it produces such stupid, moronic, and anti-social behavior in such quantities?
Complaining to the offending sites' providers is useless. Most of them ignore you, or deny that there is anything going on, or even tell you flat out "We don't care as long as they pay their bill." I've been tracking offending sites and addresses for years, and note that certain nations seem to account for the bulk of it. At the present time, Russia and Poland seem to originate more than half of the spam I see, though in the past most of it came from France, Italy, and Brazil. Before that, it was Korea, China, and other southeast Asian countries. E-mail addresses used for validation are often of the free type created on gmail, hotmail, or similar networks, so blocking an e-mail domain isn't a good idea because there are likely legitimate users on those as well. The latest increase in spam attacks has increased the number of spurious accounts generated by probably a factor of ten daily. This amounts to a DOS attack and makes me wonder if it is intentionally being directed against us. Other forums running the same software don't seem to have this problem.
