Ban Countries!

Sounds Trumpish doesn't it?

I would love to see an easier way to block specfic countries. I get a lot of spam signups from India and now Poland. I think in my ten plus years of running a site I have had one legitimate signup from India. I know I can add complete ip blocks in my .htaccess but I think a module with a checkbox by spam dominated countries would be nice to have. Maybe allow a conditional statement to override the complete country block. So if I block India, I could say unless ip range is in 1.1.1.1 to 1.1.1.4.

It sounds extreme and maybe it would be better to try and add something to the signup to make it more difficult to get by the human check.

It really seems there is no great way of solving this issue though. As soon as you make a fix, they are working on a solution. Maybe adding captcha back in would be a better idea?

Thoughts?
updated by @dazed: 06/23/17 08:31:46AM

Thoughts? ummm, hows this: The actual spammers are just renting a virtual server in india/poland/wherever and they actually live just down the road from you.

The reason they are logging in to your site is because some dude paid a $5 SEO service for 10,000 links and they're trying to sneak links into your site so they only have 9,999 left to post before they get their share of the $5.

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Whats the actual issue? is it the fake accounts existing that's troubling you, or the content they are posting?

Is the 'Spam Blocker' module not helping?

The problem I have is that every new signup I have I end up having to click the artist link and look for spam, Then I usually check the IP and see where it came from and take appropriate action. It is just an added step that I think could be avoided. I wrote some automation to spam the company who's link they posted. I sent them 500 contact messages telling them to stop spamming sites. yeah I was bored.

I have to look into the spam blocker.

here on jamroom.net when a new user signs up and they post a link somewhere to an off-site URL the whole team gets an email. "an offsite url has been detected". The URL is clipped so their post becomes:
".... Yeah, I agree, checkout this link (offsite URL clipped) ....."

So there is no gain on their part and we come along delete and ban them as soon as we get the email.

I use the WHO'S ONLINE tool in the dashboard to see if they are still online, if they are I click "Log them out" to kick them out, then delete the account and ban the IP.

Seams to work ok for here at jamroom.net.

Jamroom CMS powers this site, so you have the same features available for your site too.

Thanks Michael. I am doing a lot of the same with banning. What mod does the link detection?

Off topic slightly on other hosting in the past I always used http://www.spamtrawler.net which caught most spammers before they even reached the site.

Here's a handy thing- I know it works both in Chrome and Firefox:
When you're in your "Who's Online" window, double-click on the 'visitor' IPs once in a while (or when you have a specific bad user online). A new window will pop up that tells you the IP location country and the RANGE of ip numbers that specific registrar covers.
See my screenshot.
Note in my screenshot the IP RANGE and then note that there were SEVERAL 'visitors' within that location range (131.161.0.0 - 131.161.255.255) in Brazil that were 'visiting' my site at the same time...all with slightly different IP numbers within the range. I turned my "show Bots" button on and it revealed that none of these Brazil visitors were Bots. They are all 'suspect' visitors in the same IP range.
So I just now banned the entire range. Instead of banning just one specific IP # like 131.161.9.229, I put in my Banned Item module a new entry for IPs of: 131.161 (You can either put a period at the end of that number or not when banning.)
The result is that no IP address from that whole range will be able to join. This is more effective than banning only ONE specific IP address. You just have to be judicious about not banning large geographical IP areas in countries where there might be legit users wanting to join.
If you ever find a 'visitor' online who is from Nigeria for example you can see and then ban the whole IP RANGE they are registered in instead of just banning that one specific address.


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...just another satisfied Jamroom customer.
Migrated from Ning to Jamroom June 2015
updated by @strumelia: 03/07/17 06:58:18AM

Our challenge is that we really do have members joining from all over the world... so some of the locations where we are getting suspect visitors are also where we might get legitimate folks wanting to join.

Is there a page on JR where I can find info about the best ways to deal with spammers, how to use the Spam Blocker module effectively, etc...? Or any hot tips from this fine group?

I think he is referring to the spam block module:
https://www.jamroom.net/the-jamroom-network/networkmarket/82/spam-blocker

Hope this helps!


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Douglas Hackney
Jamroom Team - Designer/Developer/Support
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