Spambot prevention

[Bositman]

After some research I did on the spambots we were getting, I deduced that almost 90% of the bots were coming from this IP range: 182.186.*
which seems to be a range in Pakistan.

To prevent the bots from spamming our forum I've banned this range, which could also prevent some legitimate people from registering and posting. Unfortunately for the time being this is the only way to keep them out (and it's already working pretty well). When we upgrade to 1.8, we'll see if we can lift these bans in favor of a better spam prevention system.

[Brock lessner]

GrEaT news !

[tadatada]

I recently realized that those spams have been mostly posted early morning around 3 to 9 am (the US time). If adding a time factor to the spam prevention system, its accuracy might be increased.

[Bositman]

There is no option for time based bans in mybb...

[rama]

It's sad when admins have to resort to these measures but we have to defend the forums against the spammers.
We've tried a lot of options but these guys are so persistent. They really want to sell kitchens to emulator users! :/

[Bositman]

Well now apparently they are either using 182.* ranges or totally other IPs, so it's some human(s) coordinating this daily I guess...

[Coornio]

http://www.stopforumspam.com/

Can you hook up registrations with that service? If you ban a new spambot whose IP is not in their DB you could submit it.
Back when i was trying to keep another site clean i had to clean several hundred users by comparing them to that and banning individual IPs, email providers, and grouped several hits of 10 or more to ranges. Granted it didn't stop the spam altogether but i think banning the whole of Ukraine helped cut down the watches market

[Bositman]

There is a plugin for that but it's integrated in 1.8 so I'll just hold off until we upgrade

[ssakash]

There is a plugin for that but it's integrated in 1.8 so I'll just hold off until we upgrade

wow , couldnt even spot a single bot after this announcement .....

[Nobbs66]

Spotted two before I left the house this morning.