Registering with a fake email address = account deleted

[LFG]

Our system requires new users to register with a valid account number, and then confirm the registration by clicking the email received from our system.

Each and every time someone attempts to register with a fake email address, I get the bounced email in my home email box. It looks like this:

This message was created automatically by mail delivery software.

A message that you sent could not be delivered to one or more of its
recipients. This is a permanent error. The following address(es) failed:

jreichen@gmx.com
SMTP error from remote mail server after RCPT TO:<jreichen@gmx.com>:
host mx0.gmx.de [213.165.64.100]: 550 5.1.1 <jreichen@gmx.com>... User is unknown {mx016}

The next thing that happens is that I delete the account.

I don't mind copying the above email address in this post, because it is obviously a fake email address and therefore not subject to our Privacy Policy.

Want an account on this site? Use a valid email address. We are presently being attacked by some moron who registers 5 or more accounts per day with fake email addresses, putting porn site URLs in the character and guild user fields for advertising purposes.

No exceptions.

[Alinabal]

When writing an anti-robot addon for vBulletin and gathering logs from other admins, almost all of these are found to be automated forum spam bots that will register in the hope that the forum admin is a tard and will not validate email addresses. Bypassing captcha's is a peice of piss.

It was a kind of flavor of this but would add the IP to the vBulletin blacklist when the user was confirmed as a bot

Check Proxy RBL on New User Registration. - vBulletin.org Forum

Run some of the IP addresses through dnsstuff.com RBL checks and dshield.org

It ended up being a blanket ban on lots of anonymous email gateways, inbox.ru mail.ru etc etc etc.

[LFG]

Originally Posted by Alinabal

When writing an anti-robot addon for vBulletin and gathering logs from other admins, almost all of these are found to be automated forum spam bots that will register in the hope that the forum admin is a tard and will not validate email addresses. Bypassing captcha's is a peice of piss.

I honestly don't believe it is a forum spam bot doing the registrations. Each of the registered names is unique and most are role play oriented, among other factors.

All of the IPs are high anon proxy/socks servers. It is pointless to try and ban the IPs, I just delete the accounts instead, 2 or 3 times per day.

[Alinabal]

any of them open socks servers? jesus, some people should be shot for running those. You think that he would at least go to the effort of using a real email address and just clicking "register me"

[LFG]

Originally Posted by Alinabal

any of them open socks servers? jesus, some people should be shot for running those. You think that he would at least go to the effort of using a real email address and just clicking "register me"

I agree it would be less work for him to actually register the accounts using hotmail addresses or similar, and he does actually register the accounts sometimes.

Finding the accounts of this particular individual is easy. He ALWAYS uses a URL beginning with http in one field, and ALWAYS uses the code "1234" or "123456" in another field. So I just search all users for that each day and delete those accounts when I find them, in addition to all other accounts registered with a fake email address.

[Alinabal]

I havent checked if youve done it yet but most of the major search engines agreed a method to combat index spam by using rel="nofollow" as an anchor filter.

Edit templates MEMBERINFO and memberlist_resultsbit and find

<a href="$userinfo[homepage]" target="_blank" dir="ltr">$userinfo[homepage]</a>

and change to

<a href="$userinfo[homepage]" rel="nofollow" target="_blank" dir="ltr">$userinfo[homepage]</a>

Rinse and repeat for any other fields

Even if google does index the site before you get around to deleting them, their porn URLs simply wont get indexed, a waste of time to them. You could even put a note in the registration edit for homepage saying that its not ever going to get indexed

[LFG]

All great ideas. Niber, can you please implement. We definitely shouldn't have our member database spidered.

[Alinabal]

Bang it up a notch and

template: navbar
does: stops the member being spidered from links
<a href="member.php?$session[sessionurl]u=$bbuserinfo[userid]">
to
<a href="member.php?$session[sessionurl]u=$bbuserinfo[userid]" rel="nofollow">

template: header
does:stops the memberlist being spidered from the index/menu

<a href="memberlist.php$session[sessionurl_q]">
to
<a href="memberlist.php$session[sessionurl_q]" rel="nofollow">

[LFG]

Good lord. Allow me to clue a few people into something.

1. When you have this box checked in the options screen of your usercp:

The forum can send a message to your email address to inform you when someone sends you a private message.
Receive Email Notification of New Private Messages

2. And then you change your email provider, so the email address you signed up with no longer works

3. And then someone sends you cyber PMs on this site

4. The system bounces those cyber messages to me based on your invalid email address, complete with a copy of the cyber message in its full glory.

I seriously do not want to read this shit. Get a clue.

Thank you

[Hippie360]

Originally Posted by LFG

Good lord. Allow me to clue a few people into something.

1. When you have this box checked in the options screen of your usercp:


2. And then you change your email provider, so the email address you signed up with no longer works

3. And then someone sends you cyber PMs on this site

4. The system bounces those cyber messages to me based on your invalid email address, complete with a copy of the cyber message in its full glory.

I seriously do not want to read this shit. Get a clue.

Thank you

Oh wow...

I knew you were just looking for an excuse to read the hott PM's I sent you two times!