Cheshire Cat Computing

blocking gmail and yahoomail also blocks real users. It's really hard to put a stop to spammers these days.

and yeah, voted for "all of the above".

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Just like the above poster said, blocking gmail, yahoomail or hotmail will definitely block a lot of real users and i don't think you'd want that.

Anyway it looks like the amount of spam posts, not only in forums but also in comments, has spiked (again) lately.

So a solution might be to activate captcha at login or at post. It won't eliminate spam completely but i think it will get rid of alot of spam posts or topics (not human spam though).

I recently stumbled onto a little plugin that looks really interesting and i don't think that spammers have a way of getting past it (not yet at least). It's a captcha but a Puzzle based one. I think it looks promising: .

Just a heads up: it needs phpBB Version(s) 3.0.8

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- Just Cannot Wait For It

I've blocked yahoo; but too many legit users have gmail addresses for me to want to block that (though it remains an option).

The problem with captcha is that it doesnt stop spam. This spam is being placed by the sweatshops in india and china, where humans are registering and posting - they have humans solving the captchas so more or different ones, or custom questions and so on don't help as they can only prevent bots.

I've thought about blacklisting the China IP addresses (there are practically no China users on this forum) but they're already wise to this and remote proxy via trojanned DSL PCs in the US.

I'm also going to block embedded URLs - so that even if they do post here, it doesnt help their google ranking -- but that also affects legit users. Even blocking embedded URLs for people with <x postings doesnt help because they now generate a chain of posts to a dummy thread to raise their personal post count before posting.

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Steve Shipway
UNIX Systems, ITSS, University of Auckland, NZ
Woe unto them that rise up early in the morning... -- Isaiah 5:11

Hi, i'm new to your forum, and sorry to see that you're having troubles with spam here. You have a lot of quality contents. Did you consider blocking certain countries (ban IP range) put a Captcha validation in the Sign Up ? Let me know if you need help, I did have this problems on my blog and was able to get rid of spammers using the advices I gave you.

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I have considered blocking China entirely, since it is the source of most spam, but that seems a bit drastic - and also, they are now using anonymous proxies on trojanned machines elsewhere to post their spam so it doesnt help
Captcha is no use any more as this only defeats bots and they have armies of low-paid humans to do the captcha breaking.

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Steve Shipway
UNIX Systems, ITSS, University of Auckland, NZ
Woe unto them that rise up early in the morning... -- Isaiah 5:11

I've seen some sites using 2 levels of validation. First create login and password + email form - where user must fill in captcha or other validator. Then Validate account through email, a randomly generated temp passcode is given in email. then user must login and finish registration and complete another captcha or other validation. Might be overkill, but it really doesn't take the "non-spam" use that much longer to fill out.

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Gennady
scammed, slandered and criminally sued ex-employee of KeyCAPTCHA.com
for saying that cheating and spamming customers are illegal

Hi, I'm new to this forum but certainly looking forward to digging in. The very first I come across is the spam posting. That is really annoying. I totally agree.
I do not however, agree to the specific exclusion of certain "races" or ethnic groups, even countries etc. Who's to say that spam only comes from e.g. China?
There are many spammers in many other countries including the US. There are safeguard that can be put in place. The best - but also the one with most hassle - is where the forum administrator has to manually approve every registration. Tuff I know. You could consider a referral process but that too may limit. What if e.g. in addition to the authorization email some questions are included for human answering, instead of just typing the ???? in the SPAM window?

Just 2 cents.

Cheers, (and merry Xmas in advance to all)

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Cheers, Nicholas

I've just seen this thread. I signed up with a Gmail account!

A lot of legit people use Gmail accounts now as you say but if you have to ban them you have to ban them. I have several other email addresses as I am sure a lot of people have.

Sandy