spam stopping idea

[Al Skierkiewicz]

Spam has become an serious issue for all forums and email handlers. Our work email hits have gone from 25,000 a month last August to 100,000 in October.

[ThomasP]

Originally Posted by Al Skierkiewicz

Spam has become an serious issue for all forums and email handlers. Our work email hits have gone from 25,000 a month last August to 100,000 in October.

I used to work at a survey company and when we'd do the mass emails (to people who signed up on our website or their company provided the email addresses for a company survey), people would sign up the email to receive spam... we'd get around 14,000 emails marked as spam by spamassassin. It's just too easy for people to get you on spam lists these days.

[Cuog]

One method that another forum I am on uses is to have the first 2 posts verified by a moderator before they show up after that its like normal.(It is another vBulletin forum so it shouldnt be hard)

[Koko Ed]

We gotta do something fast.
The last spammer was posting porn on the site.
That is unacceptable!
I say if they don't post a team number they don't get an account.
At the very least it'll slow them down.

[Pavan Dave]

My friend called me up and told me that his torrent host was down and he told me to help him look, and I got a call from him less than 30 seconds later saying that a site called Demoniod has an odd registration key you need since their registration is off so he couldn't download. Anyways here is a link to Demonoid's registration here and it requires an invite. Maybe we could have something like that with team names, numbers, etc. Where the invitation code is a team name, sponsor, or something along those lines.

Pavan.

[Schnabel]

Is there any way we can see where the spam comes from (IP address for example) and then just block it?

[Brandon Martus]

Originally Posted by Schnabel

Is there any way we can see where the spam comes from (IP address for example) and then just block it?

Yes, but it wouldn't stop it -- very very few of the spammers will be coming from the same IP address. We can stop repeat spam -- the moderators do a good job of shutting off the spamming accounts quickly after reported.

I installed a hack last week that requires a user to answer a simple question (2+2, etc.) when making a new account. Since then, we have had a dramatic drop in spam, so I guess it worked. So until the bots figure that out.. I think we're safe.

[Kyle]

Make the answer wrong for 2+2 so it will be 1 or 5 and put then in the registration process that way they can't program the bots to just use math.

[Brandon Martus]

Originally Posted by Kyle

Make the answer wrong for 2+2 so it will be 1 or 5 and put then in the registration process that way they can't program the bots to just use math.

That's one of many questions that may come up. Others are things like 'Dean Kamens last name is ..' or 'Type the word Inspiration in the box provided ..', etc..