Seems like all the spammers are from Russia?

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php_mike
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Seems like all the spammers are from Russia?

Post by php_mike »

It seems I am non stop removing accounts and their associated posts (moderated) from what appear to be Russians. It is non stop, constant and they seem to be the only ones posting garbage.

Is this the case for others and what do others do about it. Blocking IP ranges doesn't seem like a good solution.
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KevC
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Re: Seems like all the spammers are from Russia?

Post by KevC »

Q&A with a question you can't search the answer to. Works very well.
IP banning is no good because they use proxies, don't use the same one twice and it just makes the reg page slow for everyone else while it checks all the IPs on the list. Might as well empty the ones you have.

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php_mike
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Re: Seems like all the spammers are from Russia?

Post by php_mike »

I had tried the Q&A but it is either too easy for some and too hard for others.
Do you mean it keeps them out because they cannot read English?
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david63
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Re: Seems like all the spammers are from Russia?

Post by david63 »

php_mike wrote: Wed Sep 20, 2017 8:58 pm Do you mean it keeps them out because they cannot read English?
No - you want a question that you cannot Google the answer to.
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php_mike
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Re: Seems like all the spammers are from Russia?

Post by php_mike »

Problem with that is it makes it very difficult for legit signups to answer. Quite the conundrum.
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Re: Seems like all the spammers are from Russia?

Post by stevemaury »

Not really. Give me a link to your site and I will give you a question anyone but a bot can answer.
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Re: Seems like all the spammers are from Russia?

Post by Tailhook »

I've been using the Google reCAPTCHA plugin with the Stop Forum Spam extension since early 2016 on 3.1 and now 3.2. Haven't had more than 5 total total bot account registrations and ZERO spam postings since.
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KevC
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Re: Seems like all the spammers are from Russia?

Post by KevC »

Questions are easy to come up with.

e.g.if your site logo had a ship in it you could ask which form of transport is in our logo? To which the accepted answer could be ship or boat

You need something that requires some logic to answer about the site itself or even a word in the site description. What is the 4th word in our site description?
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Re: Seems like all the spammers are from Russia?

Post by 2600 »

Read my signature.
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php_mike
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Re: Seems like all the spammers are from Russia?

Post by php_mike »

Hi, sorry for the long delay but yes, I've tested using a Q&A and I think that will work. If not, then I'll look at some of other other suggestions in this thread.

I suppose part of the issue is that it's not clear to me why this has stopped spammers so far. Are they mainly bots? If they are bots, how did they read the characters challenge. If they aren't, then the simple assumption is that they cannot read English.
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KevC
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Re: Seems like all the spammers are from Russia?

Post by KevC »

Yes they are bots.
They can read wobbly letters. It's only OCR after all.

What they can't do so well is interpret a question where they have to follow an instruction.
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Re: Seems like all the spammers are from Russia?

Post by php_mike »

Much clearer now. Thanks for all the input.
So far, no new spammer registrations what so ever since changing to Q&A based on input here.
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