[support] Many false applications for accounts

[Jamie Holly]

I've used the before. It helps. About 3 years ago it was catching 75% of 
them. Now it's down to less than 10%.

Jamie Holly
http://hollyit.net

On 4/5/2014 11:12 AM, Ken Robinson wrote:
> Take a look at the spambot module. This module will check to see if an 
> entered email address is in their database of know spammers and will 
> not let them register if it is.
>
>
> Ken
>
>
> On Sat, Apr 5, 2014 at 10:23 AM, Jamie Holly 
> <hovercrafter at earthlink.net <mailto:hovercrafter at earthlink.net>> wrote:
>
>     That's a huge problem that started a couple of years ago. There
>     are some companies out there actually paying people X dollars for
>     registering Y accounts on different sites. One of my clients was
>     getting up to 1,000 registrations a day last year from these
>     people. We finally let some through for a couple of days to post
>     their spam, then checked what all the links were going to. They
>     were different sites, but owned by one company in the UK. The
>     lawyers sent this company a letter and it stopped.
>
>     The really sad part about this new tactic is that your options are
>     greatly limited to the point of non-existent on stopping them.
>     Since they are humans doing actual registrations, any attempts to
>     thwart them will also get the regular users trying to sign up.
>     You're left with actual human moderation to combat them.
>
>     Globally 2013 saw huge spikes in spamming activity. These people
>     are getting more bold, and that does lead to us having to rethink
>     a strategy to combat them. Here's some possibilities:
>
>     - Limit the number of registrations by IP in a given time frame.
>     Either block or require admin authorization on future attempts.
>     This works to an extent, but if people use something like Tor to
>     register, then it doesn't.
>     - Create moderation displays, showing the first 5 posts and
>     comments from new registrations.
>     - If you allow new users to post content, force the new post to a
>     draft and email site administration/moderators to approve it. Once
>     they get X approved posts, then they can publish.
>     - Depending on your site and users, require admin authorization on
>     certain IP's based upon their geographical location (requires
>     GeoIP library or 3rd party API).
>
>     No solution is perfect, but I have used a combination of these in
>     the past for clients and they have been very happy with the
>     results. Most options are only doable via custom coding though.
>
>     Jamie Holly
>     http://hollyit.net
>
>     On 4/5/2014 8:51 AM, Walt Daniels wrote:
>>     I get them to, but it is not mollom's fault. They are actually
>>     registering and typing the captcha just like a legitimate user.
>>     In our case they even have to use a legitimate email as they
>>     cannot do anything more than an anonymous user until the verify
>>     their email. I don't see any pattern I could apply to the user
>>     names that would distinguish them from our valid users who have
>>     some pretty weird usernames. You could find or right a module
>>     that enforced using "real names", i.e. John Doe. But I even got
>>     some like that that turn out to be spammers.
>>
>>
>>     On Sat, Apr 5, 2014 at 8:13 AM, Linda Romey <lromey at gmail.com
>>     <mailto:lromey at gmail.com>> wrote:
>>
>>         I am having the same issue. Have you contacted Mollom? That's
>>         on my to-do list. I'm not sure of the value of the monthly
>>         fee if I still have to continually monitor my site and delete
>>         spam accounts manually.
>>
>>
>>         On Sat, Apr 5, 2014 at 8:09 AM, James Rome
>>         <jamesrome at gmail.com <mailto:jamesrome at gmail.com>> wrote:
>>
>>             I have Mollom installed, but yet a handful of account
>>             applications
>>             escape their captcha/analysis each day. The problem is
>>             that the only
>>             obviously wrong field is the username, which is not
>>             listed as a field in
>>             the Mollom configuration. I get names such as:
>>             qropspension_5362
>>
>>             Is there any other way to get rid of these would-be spammers?
>>
>>             --
>>             James A. Rome
>>
>>             http://jamesrome.net
>>
>>             --
>>             [ Drupal support list | http://lists.drupal.org/ ]
>>
>>
>>
>>         --
>>         [ Drupal support list | http://lists.drupal.org/ ]
>>
>>
>>
>>
>
>
>     --
>     [ Drupal support list | http://lists.drupal.org/ ]
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>
>
>

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