Is banning IP's for bad forum members a good idea?

[sunfunbill]

Well my forum has finally gotten popular enough so that I have spam problems! I do use the email verification, and even the catchupa or whatever it's called.

So I assume the ones getting through that are real people who took the time to make an account in order to spam. My ban options are by username, email and ip's. So far I just go ahead and use all three.

However I know some providers use the same ip address for a block of users, is that correct? If so, should I not use the ip ban? Or is there a way to see if the ip they use is just for one person?

Using the ip ban seems much better to me, but not if it blocks others. Anyone here know if I should use the ip ban or not? Thanks!

[Josea]

I have a dial up account at a fairly big provider and I know that I don't aways have the same IP. I once belong to a forum that was having a big spam problem and I was one of the moderators. I only had the ability to delete spam but I would leave the username and IP posted at a topic dedicated to moderators. Well one day I discovered that I was banned. After I logged off line then logged back in I was no longer banned. It took me a while to realised that this was due to a spammer getting banned who used the same service provider that I used.

I would ban by email and user name. Hold up on IP banning until it becomes a very big problem. My 2 cents.


BTW does your forum have a way of deleting a bad member? Or just banning?

[sunfunbill]

Thanks Josea. I'll leave the ones I've banned by ip as they are, but only use the email and username for the others who come along.

You can both just delete a member as well as use banning by username, ip address and/or email.

[Chang]

Yeah, dial-up users will almost always get a different IP every time they connect. Even broadband users will get a new IP after a shutdown most of the time.

You could ban blocks of IP's using a wildcard, if you had a bad problem with someone, but of course you'd be banning a bunch of innocent people from the same ISP.

[cink2]

Originally posted by sunfunbill
Thanks Josea. I'll leave the ones I've banned by ip as they are, but only use the email and username for the others who come along.

You can both just delete a member as well as use banning by username, ip address and/or email.

Spammers use Proxy so banning IP won't solve your problem. You should make good captcha and that's all. I think you are using now default captcha.

[pyratas]

Spammers use Proxy so banning IP won't solve your problem. You should make good captcha and that's all. I think you are using now default captcha.

Though, don't go overboard with the captcha....

Earlier today I was on Valve's (the makers of the Half-Life game series) site trying to search their forums and I couldn't read the first 5 (FIVE!) captchas, and I'm not color-blind or hard of sight by any means! It was REALLY overboard.

They would have lost my traffic if they weren't the SOLE sellers of a videogame plush toy I want to see re-ordered, hehe.

There's gotta be a nice middle.

[cink2]

You are right, sometime it takes me few times until i write captcha correctly.

All I wanted to say that Bill should replace his default captcha.

[sunfunbill]

I noticed I can also set it up so I have to approve each one first. I made it that way, then made a new account to see what happens.

BUT, all it does is notify me a new member needs to be approved. When I click the approval link, I simply get to see the username and email of that person. So how the hell am I suppose to know if it's a bad one or not?

I suppose that extra might be enough to stop someone who keeps doing it over and over. The ones I'm having trouble with always have a gmail account and a username that makes no sense.

What a waste of time for them, even if they post something I delete it within 2 minutes since that's how often I check my email!!! Stupid fuckers!!!

[cink2]

give a link to your board. we will see what can we do.

[Latinluvin]

What kind of Forum software do you use. I recently started using phpBB3 and over the last couple of days i've been getting some spam posts written by some odd usernames. I now only let registered users create new topics as opposed to just anyone.

[sunfunbill]

I use SMF, and I never let anyone post, only registered users but I still had lots of spam.

However ever since I switched to having to approve each member first I have not had a single spammer try to join. Funny how that happened as soon as I mentioned it on here.

[Latinluvin]

That sounds like a good idea. Im still learning the software and have yet to figure out how to turn on the approve each post function. I wish the software was a little more self explanatory. I wonder if the Cozy forums has any problems with spam.

[cink2]

Originally posted by sunfunbill
Funny how that happened as soon as I mentioned it on here.

Ok you got me. It was me, I wanted to have some fun and make you angry

There are thousands of spammers and they make it automaticly. Change your default captcha and everything will be ok.

[sunfunbill]

There are thousands of spammers and they make it automaticly. Change your default captcha and everything will be ok.

Thanks, I'll try that once I have time to figure out how I do it. Got to make lots of changes to it, just need the time.

[emac]

Banning spammers is always a good idea