[Yatta]

All of them use mail.ru to sign up to this website. I'm thinking about banning registrations with mail.ru, but I know some people here legitly use it. What to do... what to do.

[Orochi Avlis]

Could you make exceptions to those who already use it, and just not let any new users who use mai.ru sign up?

[Micki!]

Maybe that "manually write a code to join" thing will work...
Spam bots can't go through those, since the numbers are written as an image, and not letters it can use to proceed...

Of course, all the bots that currently are here, must be banned first, so they don't stalk around while registered anymore...

How does 3DR handle this issue anyways..?
I've never seen anything like this there before...

[Halcyon]

I was Co-Admin of a small german forum and we had to deal with spambots almost daily. I friggin' hate them. In the end they got so damn annoying that i decided to ban all mail.ru adresses.
I dont think that many people here use .ru adresses, so I would ban them. You could put some sort of warning in the registration form. Something like "Attention: mail.ru adresses will be auto-banned."

[Iggy]

Micki!, on Jun 28 2006, 01:55 PM, said:

Maybe that "manually write a code to join" thing will work...
Spam bots can't go through those, since the numbers are written as an image, and not letters it can use to proceed...

Bingo.

Micki!, on Jun 28 2006, 01:55 PM, said:

How does 3DR handle this issue anyways..?
I've never seen anything like this there before...

New accounts must be approved by Joe first.

[Micki!]

Iggy, on Jun 29 2006, 01:54 PM, said:

Bingo.

Great...

Iggy, on Jun 29 2006, 01:54 PM, said:

New accounts must be approved by Joe first.
<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Ahh yes, i forgot that...
That way he can filter out manually who should join or not...

[Yatta]

We already use image verification. I might ban mail.ru after all. We have about 6 members here who use it legitly, though.

[Iggy]

I'm curious how these spambots are able to get through the verification even with the use of images.

About those Russian email-addresses, I just used the banlist of one of my forums and a co-Admin also blocked all .ru-emails due to spambots abusing the boards in the past.

[Micki!]

I'm just guessing here, but perhaps the images numbers/letters, are not random afterall...
Say, if the numbers /letters exist in a certain amount, untill the same numbers/letters are reused, because the image does not change each letter and number...

So, say if those controlling these spambots are aware of which numbers/letters there are in these images, they might cycle through all of them when registering, untill they get it right...

Damnit, if just my english wasn't that limited, i could've explained this much better...

[Yatta]

I understand what you mean. If the bots are "cycling" as you said, that means they're wasting a lot of our bandwidth too.

[Yatta]

Maill.ru is banned. Users who legitly signed up with mail.ru will be able to continue using their accounts.

[Micki!]

Fine...
It just sucks, that the upcoming users, who might mail.ru legitly can't join now...
I think there should be put up a warning/Note, saying that this mail address has been blocked... And that users who use this mail address should contact the admin (you) personally... This way you can manually activate the few (i assume it's not many) users who want to join, with this address...

[Yatta]

Well I did put a warning there. I'm sure poeple who use mail.ru have other e-mail accounts as well (hopefully).

[Micki!]

I sure hope so...
I'd really like Duke4.net to be as user friendly as we possibly can make it...

[Cerberus_e]

Why do they all use mail.ru? Very stupid on the spammer's behalf.

[Yatta]

Or maybe mail.ru is the easiest place to sign up for mail, that even a bot can do it.

[Iggy]

An IPB forum I run is also frequently haunted by spambots, a perfect solution to this was to have members have their e-mail validated ánd the account to be approved by an Admin. By the looks of the amount of spambots signing up and spamming this solution looks worthy enough to try.

[Micki!]

I like that idea...