evcom Posted June 8 Posted June 8 Spam posts are on the increase on my site and while in the last few months those members had an IP origin of e.g. South Africa, Malaysia, etc...I observed, that recently those spammy members register with the IP 127.0.0.1. This makes it hard to exclude them as some real members (incl. myself) are also registered with 127.0.0.1... Does anyone have a suggestion how to deal with such SPAM? Word filters are already active. Restricting certain e-mail addresses is a bit a tricky as it would make it harder for regular members to sign up. E.g. restricting members using gmail addresses for mod approval. Any idea much appreciated. Thanks!
Randy Calvert Posted June 8 Posted June 8 (edited) 127.0.0.1 is not a real IP address. It’s a local loopback address. If you converted from another forum that did not keep IP information, it would show 127.0.0.1. Either way, IP banning is not effect in modern days. For example, VPNs allow users to switch IPs instantly. Being on a mobile device as you wander around town would change your address. Anyone who has dynamically assigned IP addresses from their ISP would also get new addresses from time to time. Regarding dealing with spam, have you setup hCaptcha and increased the challenge difficulty? Have you setup registration question/answer challenges with questions that are relevant to your community but not to general spammers? (For a Star Trek site, something like “Who was Captain Kirk’s first officer?”) You should also check out the third party resource CleanTalk which can help filter out spam registrations… https://cleantalk.org/help/install-ipboard4 Edited June 8 by Randy Calvert evcom 1
Recommended Posts