fake accounts?

incrediblestuff

SearchingForTheHolyGrail!
webmeister
CAG
Joined
Mar 22, 2010
Location
Mostly the Netherlands
Hi webbys,
I am fairly new on the whole matter, and don't even know if this is the correct part of the forum to ask, but here goes:

So i just recently launched my first affiliate site.. and it's a work in progress.
Of course i am happy to see that i did get some traffic, and even some registrants on the forum section.
However, looking closer at some of the entries, or even most, i see they all use names like "EstefanaMorgan1985" and
"CrystleHenry1978" with respectively "real" names being Annette Yoo and Lizzy Wetzel.
Now i'm pretty sure that those are fake accounts: they have not posted anything but those accounts, now 6 in total
have been registering in the last weeks.. some of them waited a good while before clicking the activation links in their emails.

What am i to think of this? Are they going to try and do a flood attack of sorts? Are they going to be lurking till there's enough traffic to spam? Should i just ban them immediately?
For instance i can see the email addy they used and one is for example "discreettyrant237@hotmail.com"
which does not sound clean to me ^.^
If i am not allowed to post email addresses from non proven spammers feel free to edit it out.
All of the suspected email addresses are Hotmail btw.
I tried to Google this but that didn't give much results so i thought i would ask here.
There is a function in my admin panel to allow banned email addresses which is set to not accept, but im figuring this does only count for my own database..
Is there anywhere where i could crosscheck email addy's or their Ip's to see if they are on blacklists?

Any advice is highly appreciated: my own instinct was to just ban the lot, but i am not 100% sure..
Regards..
Dirk
 
Hi webbys,
I am fairly new on the whole matter, and don't even know if this is the correct part of the forum to ask, but here goes:

So i just recently launched my first affiliate site.. and it's a work in progress.
Of course i am happy to see that i did get some traffic, and even some registrants on the forum section.
However, looking closer at some of the entries, or even most, i see they all use names like "EstefanaMorgan1985" and
"CrystleHenry1978" with respectively "real" names being Annette Yoo and Lizzy Wetzel.
Now i'm pretty sure that those are fake accounts: they have not posted anything but those accounts, now 6 in total
have been registering in the last weeks.. some of them waited a good while before clicking the activation links in their emails.

What am i to think of this? Are they going to try and do a flood attack of sorts? Are they going to be lurking till there's enough traffic to spam? Should i just ban them immediately?
For instance i can see the email addy they used and one is for example "discreettyrant237@hotmail.com"
which does not sound clean to me ^.^
If i am not allowed to post email addresses from non proven spammers feel free to edit it out.
All of the suspected email addresses are Hotmail btw.
I tried to Google this but that didn't give much results so i thought i would ask here.

There is a function in my admin panel to allow banned email addresses which is set to not accept, but im figuring this does only count for my own database..
Is there anywhere where i could crosscheck email addy's or their Ip's to see if they are on blacklists?

Any advice is highly appreciated: my own instinct was to just ban the lot, but i am not 100% sure..
Regards..
Dirk

Spammers love forums, I was getting between 3-5 sign ups a day just so they could add there crappy link.

I implemented a function where links could not be posted by users that have less than 20 posts, this didn't stop them signing up but stopped all these links being posted. I also blocked some I.P addresses, certain I.P address ranges etc.

You say they have not posted anything? have you checked there profiles etc, you will be amazed at where they "think" they can get away with a link. Do you use a captcha for people that sign up? could be spam bots.

Which forum software are you using? most come with some nifty plugins that may help.

I have just noticed that Google does not have you indexed yet so the sign ups would have come through any links you have around the web, the only 2 I could find were on Casinomeister and Google Groups (this will be the culprit I would say)

P.S Nice domain name :) should get you ranking well.
 
Spammers love forums, I was getting between 3-5 sign ups a day just so they could add there crappy link.

I implemented a function where links could not be posted by users that have less than 20 posts, this didn't stop them signing up but stopped all these links being posted. I also blocked some I.P addresses, certain I.P address ranges etc.

You say they have not posted anything? have you checked there profiles etc, you will be amazed at where they "think" they can get away with a link.

Which forum software are you using? most come with some nifty plugins that may help.

Hi Matt, cheers for taking time to reply.
I am using FluxBB, and i am pretty new to it, but i was under the impression that for now, with the standard package, i have prevented the most likely flood and spam attacks, i also am counting on the company that hosts my site, they are partly responsible for security too:)
I did not really check for plug-ins yet, and i can ban them with one click, then delete their profile if needed, for now i'm just collecting them.
Who knows maybe i can get rid of all of them before my traffic goes up:)
Would be nice to welcome new members in a "clean" house.
And yes, i did search their profiles.. they have not posted anything at all, no sig's, images or whatever.
Hence my doubt to act.

Do you agree they look like spammers?
I'm 99.9% but i would like to be 100% sure.
I gotten a few tips by P.M. too, thanks guys:)
Will check their IP's soon.

What i would like to know is how to prevent such jerks from signing up in the first place.

Edit:
Thanks for the compliment! and i was under the impression that i was indexed actually, i have google analitics installed and that was the first thing i did, force the google bot to index me..
Maybe i am misunderstanding you?
I do show up in google if you look for my domain, or my domain minus "s"
 
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At Casinomeister's forum, one must pass through a cyber gauntlet to join. To ensure that real people are signing up, we require a number of questions to be answered legitimately such as "Tell us something interesting about yourself" "Where are you located?" "What are your favorite bands?" etc. There are a load of questions, and it takes a minute or two. We have software that times how long people are filling these questions out. If these questions are answered too quickly, (within 30 seconds) the registration is deleted. There are about 200-600 bot registration attempts daily which are discarded. Some fill out the questionnaire within 2-3 seconds :eek2:

The registrations that are filled out are placed in a moderator's queue. I personally read each one to ensure it's not a bot. For some reason, there is a bot that targets the CM site that enters the same response for the first question in each registration attempt. Also if a person claims they are in the UK and the IP is from Vietnam or India - delete it. Any email address that looks like this: a.mei.12543.whisun.e.e.@gmail.com (lots of periods) - delete it.

Most of the registrations coming out of China, Pakistan, Malaysia, Vietnam, India, are all bogus. I delete most of these - and you know you are on the right track when these people don't respond to the "your account has been deleted" email they receive (it's automated).

It takes some experience to spot bogus registrations, but once you get the hang of it, it's pretty easy. We receive about 350 new members each month. Of these, a very small percentage of spammers slip through.
 
Cheers Bryan, that's also some useful info..
I also have a "rule set" which has to be confirmed but that is about all, but i must confess i didn't want to scare people with too lengthy of a registration form (yet).

I'll try and see what the options are with FluxBB (i wanted vbulletin t.b.h, but the license was too expensive for poor old me) to see if can create such a queue too.

Is there anything one could do to discourage or prevent them from signing up in the first place?

Thanks for your time b.t.w.!
 
Cheers Bryan, that's also some useful info..
I also have a "rule set" which has to be confirmed but that is about all, but i must confess i didn't want to scare people with too lengthy of a registration form (yet).

I'll try and see what the options are with FluxBB (i wanted vbulletin t.b.h, but the license was too expensive for poor old me) to see if can create such a queue too.

Is there anything one could do to discourage or prevent them from signing up in the first place?

Thanks for your time b.t.w.!

Was taking a look around as I had not heard of Fluxbb.

I have found some mods that maybe handy and slow them down for you :thumbsup:

If the mods below do not help then I would suggest using the SMF (simple machines forum) php package, I can then point you to some great mods and show you some tweaks as its very customizable.

Add captchas and secret passwords etc -
You do not have permission to view link Log in or register now.


Easy to use spam filter -
You do not have permission to view link Log in or register now.


This is similar to the first one, allows you to add captchas etc -
You do not have permission to view link Log in or register now.
 
:thumbsup:

Checked them out and they are definitely useful!
Thanks for your effort and time:)

Just to bump this, for other people that use FluxBB:

I installed the honeypot add on:
This mod attempts to block spammers by using 3 levels of detection :
- HoneyPot field method
- StopForumSpam database
- DNSBL

And am glad to say my bot registrations dropped to zero :thumbsup:

For all other newbies like myself, i found that indeed google analytics is a must have, i just added a +1 button to my + account
(and used it on CM ;p) but especially the analytics control panel is very useful for webbies.
It might be slightly off topic, but since i started this thread i will let it slide:
What analysis tools do you use, and why?
 
For all other newbies like myself, i found that indeed google analytics is a must have, i just added a +1 button to my + account
(and used it on CM ;p) but especially the analytics control panel is very useful for webbies.
It might be slightly off topic, but since i started this thread i will let it slide:
What analysis tools do you use, and why?

Google Analytics is flawed and does not properly capture all traffic. It depends on a snippet of code to be loaded and that code is often blocked. There are a dozen other reasons why traffic does not show up in their reports. They typically show only a fraction of the traffic that can be found in your server logs. I prefer to use awstats to put the log files into a format that is easy to read at a glance. It will be a much more accurate picture of who is visiting your site and it will not require any additional code to be added to your site.
 

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