They do use real people for sure. We have every method in place to stop them. Captcha doesn't stop them nor does a Q&A. We also implemented the IP address checking through Spamhaus, but that's not 100% either. I've spent the last 7 days adding ip addresses to the forum ban list and also ip tables if you know what that is. No, we will never ban yahoo or gmail accounts.
Thanks,
Jay Gentry

How are these people getting in without their initial posting being approved. Are they using internet magic or backdoors, stuff that us plain folk do not understand?
Just curious. If there is anyway that I can help you out, pm to me what it is.

Curly

I don't know who they are but they are still getting to the Muller Forum!!

I see the registration form has a Q&A field, but it does not appear to be generating a new, random Q each time the page loads. CAPTCHA and Q&A will not be effective unless it is randomized.

Tal,
It would seem that the latest kiddie script can answer anything if it can be googled.
Jay

Is outlook.com banned?

Seems the best way I've seen this handled on other forums is to increase the number of volunteer moderators who can delete the junk posts and ban the bots as they pop up.

Hello Jay,

Just to clarify, you've implemented spam blockers at your webserver? Or is it a third-party agreement?

A few things I thought of when I read your post...

Do the logs give any indication as to where the IP addresses originate from? May behoove you to just block regional blocks of IP addresses. When you say IP address tables (routing tables), are you talking about at the router specifically, or the webserver?

I don't recall seeing any type of spambot filter on this website when I registered. Is it possible to implement that for creating new accounts, as opposed to banning domains?

You may also want to consider Bayesian filtering...

I know this is your job and you gotta do what you gotta do. Just throwing some stuff out there...

There are a lot of options for hardening a webserver

By the way, these may not be questions you'd want to answer publicly, so I understand if you don't reply.

Thats a shame but I'm glad your on top of it!

Not sure if this it the right place to post this, but I tried to send an email to [email protected] and it bounced as undeliverable.

Unspecified Error (CONNECTING_WITH_TLS): Protocol error

One other to consider if it isn't implemented yet is StopForumSpam. Its free, effective, and they have a plugin for phpBB.

I think you should ban all free email accounts. gmail is easy to manipulate too nowadays

I am a retired network engineer, and the primary spammers are usually from China and Russia. If you are technically skilled, a great gig is network security. Lots of industrial espionage is going on along with military and political hacks. Then we have a huge amount of bored teens who think fracking someone up is cool. Internet Explorer is the easiest browser to hack, Mozolla Firefox is a better choice for browsing. Google Chrome is another option but I don't trust Google for anything.

No kidding! Try this:

Search for Cabela's, Academy, or any of the big Sporting chains.

Next, click on the top link in the search list.

Note that ammo and guns are hidden.

Google's policy explains that they're trying to protect their users and provide a positive shipping experience.

As a brand new member, this policy was a major hassle and caused me to almost not join the forum. My primary e-mail, which is hotmail and I've had for 15 years, wouldn't allow me to register and the little message gave no explanation why, other than it was an invalid email account. I had to sign up for an entirely new email account to join, and honestly, I don't think most people would do this. There has got to be a better way to combat the spam issue.

Well, if you have any superior ideas to mitigate spam issues, come forward with them. With there being so many providers of free email, there should not be too much difficulty getting another account.
We were getting covered up with spammers using hotmail, that has stopped.
Spam is a huge problem on every bulletin board, probably more than you can conceive. I spend a huge amount of time every day throwing out spam accounts and would hate to have to spend any more than that.

Welcome to Shotgun World!

Spammers have been a major pain to all the members of this board for a very long time. The moderators have been doing an excellent job of keeping these cretins off the site lately, and I for one will gladly put up with minor issues to try to keep the site spammer free. I hope as time passes you come to appreciate the job Jay and the moderators do.

I'm looking forward to your future contributions on the board.

Newbie here to the website. Great job on editing the spam.