Registrations from weare94.com -- Spammers?

creativepart · Post by **creativepart** » Fri Jun 09, 2006 5:03 pm

I get registrations daily from various things that look to be spammers. They have various domain names, today it was www.weare94.com. They are always listing 3rd world countries as their location. They ALWAYS have some kryptic website address with www.weare94.com in it and the website link ALWAYs yeilds a 404 error -- a funny, plain old kind of 404 error page.

I did a google search for weare94.com and found hundreds of registrations at forums all over the world. All with www addresses in their Profile and all of the links brought the same 404 error.

Here's the URL that one of these registrations put in a forum I found on Google called Extemplate forum at Rice University (location listed as Ahganistan):
http://www.weare94.com/90/t-shirt-funny.html

What's up with these things? I realize that the ISP could have just shut down the weare94.com website, but I got a registration like this an hour ago and the website is down already.

Why would someone post all these all over the place when the website doesn't exist?

I did a whois search on the domain and its owned by a Russian named:
Vladimir Cheburekov.

Paul Green

RobertPlantFan · Post by **RobertPlantFan** » Sat Jun 10, 2006 3:42 am

I get a lot of registrations from them. Also from:
mulex.com
gewhiz1.com
mail.ru
gawab.com

I just delete them the minute I see them these days. Banning these domains helped a lot, but they just come up with a new one to get by it after a bit.

Post by **Marshalrusty** » Sat Jun 10, 2006 3:47 am

Protecting your board from spam/bots
1) Disable guest posting (if you haven't already done so)
2) Update to 2.0.21
3) Enable visual confirmation in the administration panel>configuration (Don't see it?)
4) Set activation to 'user' (in the administration panel>configuration)
5) See this topic: Fight the spam registration bots!

jimnms · Post by **jimnms** » Sat Jun 10, 2006 8:19 am

Marshalrusty wrote: Protecting your board from spam/bots
1) Disable guest posting (if you haven't already done so)
2) Update to 2.0.21
3) Enable visual confirmation in the administration panel>configuration (Don't see it?)
4) Set activation to 'user' (in the administration panel>configuration)
5) See this topic: Fight the spam registration bots!

I've done 1-4, and still get constant spam registrations. I host and admin a small forum for a non profit org. I was away for about a month, and when I got back I literally had to delete over 100 spambot registrations.

Thanks for the link in #5 though, I'm still reading through it, I will probably install some of those mods.

creativepart · Post by **creativepart** » Sat Jun 10, 2006 2:10 pm

I too get the rest of those as well. And I too have already done 1 thru 4. I think it's a real person making those registrations. I'll look at number 5.
Thanks

ircdigStaff · Post by **ircdigStaff** » Fri Jun 16, 2006 7:21 pm

What would these bots gain by spamming sites that do not exist? I can understand that they may be trying to increase their page rank by increasing the amount of incoming links but if the site does not exist, then why try to increase the page rank?

creativepart · Post by **creativepart** » Fri Jun 16, 2006 7:40 pm

Maybe the thought is to put links out to get a Google Ranking for a domain name to enhance its sales potential. Or maybe it's going to be turned into a website in 6 months and they're doing this work now so they don't get abuse complaints.

Who knows?

Wo1f · Post by **Wo1f** » Sun Jun 18, 2006 3:41 pm

Hi creativepart,

From one of my recent replies to a similar case:

Wo1f wrote: You might want to take a look at this mod. It does exactly what you're looking for and protects your users from viewing the spam filth. It is located in the MODS in Development forum, but is a release candidate and has been submitted to the MODS DB for validation.

User Shield [RC3] wrote:Benefits

User Shield is first and foremost a spam deterrent mod with the specific purpose of making your board useless in helping spammers improve their popular search engine rankings. It does this by hiding username and profil data from all, except the administrator, until they are activated (in the case of legitimate new members) or deleted (in the case of despised spam-bots). This requires for greater efficiency, that "Enable account activation" be set to "Admin" in the ACP.

It also shields your regular members and moderators from potentially offensive material (username, location, signatures and website) and does it seamlessly.

When countermeasures are behind the curve so to speak, administrators may have to deal with a larger number of non-activated registration entries. User Shield offers a quick and efficient management list for such cases, enabling bulk deletion for a proper and satisfying disposal of spam-bot filth or bulk activation (for a fast growing and spam free community ).

User Shield [RC3]
[/url]

If you have any questions that have not been answered by visiting the link above, post your concerns in that thread and I'll take care of it.

Regards,
Wolf

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