Yes - it just screws up our understanding of how many users we have, what percent are active, etc…
https://www.evernote.com/l/AGpxoz0XNShIjphfH7q72aRIUhI8dFDG128B/image.png
I think a reasonable setting for your site (that we should add) is
- Don’t allow users to enter any profile info until they have at least 1 public post
This would force spammers to out themselves.
@codinghorror I actually think that is a sane default, it erases the issue of ghost accounts messing stuff up, also … why muck with your profile prior to posting something on the site seems pointless.
No, you want them to fill out their profile so you can definitively know they are spammers vs. new sign ups that just never come back for “unknown reasons”, this will haunt the minds of every metric obsessed manager and they will never let you delete these “users”.
Strongly opposed, also, this was covered at extreme length in existing topics…
I support Akismet profile checks and auto delete of users who never come back and never read anything.
I also would love to see this implemented at some point. I know we have a few staff members who watch the Suspect list and remove profile spam now, this would alleviate some of that work for them.
Some stats from Sitepoint.
In the past 7 days we’ve had 32 users with spam profiles. There were an additional 8 members who shared an IP address that were also dealt with, a few of those had spammy profiles too.
So you can say between 32 and 40 of our user registrations in the last 7 days were to create spammy profiles.
(or at least these are the ones we caught through manual processes)
Agreed.
I’ve seen quite a number of users return after a week, a month, six weeks, whatever and fill out their profile (usually Spammy) and still they haven’t read a post, far less made one. We even have members imported from vBulletin, with 0 posts there, who have popped up on Discourse at some stage, filled out their profile, and not read a single post.
Really? Do they not have even the slightest curiosity about how the new forum looks compared to the old? Apparently, they have no interest in the forum at all, beyond using it to promote their fiverr account.
I actually feel these accounts are worse than those who sign up, complete their profiles - and never return. Some of those, at least, may have had good intentions, but returning simply to Spam your profile whilst ignoring the actual forum is just cynical, IMHO.
This sounds reasonable.
Also - an FYI to the Discourse team - the “suspect users” list seems to be getting only about 30% to 50% of the spam user accounts that I’m getting every day. Whatever you’re doing right now is a start, but needs more work.
Thanks for all your efforts.
It seems like the dimensions of the avatar image might also be a clue that an account is spam. In the 30 per day that I’m getting right now - all the avatar imgs seem to be the same shape/size:
https://www.evernote.com/l/AGoxBlMG_jFDuIxXxLGjq-wBXy07DJTxUtUB/image.png
If you go to the Autobiographer Badge page do the avatars stand out?
(We don’t have that Badge enabled so I can’t see on our site)
Reminder, as you delete these users as spammers, the IP block ban widens. So the more you delete, the more you are blacklisting IPs and IP ranges.
Unless the attackers have a crazily large number of IPs at their disposal, this will slowly start to prevent them from signing up as the blacklists are merged and expanded.
This is all automatic based on deletion.
We had so many Spam/fake sign-ups from the same provider that we eventually took the step of manually blocking all their IP addresses that we could find. This slowed things down considerably, but occasionally one pops up that wasn’t on our list, and the same profile patterns now turn up on two other providers, although not many and not often.
This is helpful - but it would be even more helpful if it was easier to delete groups of new registrants at once - similar to how you can delete a large number of message in Gmail. Its very time consuming to sit and delete one registrant after another. Try doing it for 30 accounts - and it takes probably 15 minutes or more - every day. Its a pain and I’ve stopped doing it because its too time-consuming.
This topic is not closed and I am not trying to hijack it. It seems very relevant as I look at what is in place to prevent spammers from automatic or manual registration abuses.
I do like the thought that forum users who have not read any content should be suspected – just wondering how “auto delete of users who never come back and never read anything” could affect users who register with the main intention to interact via mailing list mode with e-mail-in and reply by mail features. I suspect you are mostly thinking forum, yet the mailing list features are a huge asset and I would like to keep this user from getting auto deleted, and perhaps consider ways to assure they are able to gain reputation, reference other users with @ user etc. Mailing list users may only come to the forum to create the account and access public content without logging in (unless we force private content so they must login to read it, or educate them on the value of logging in for personal messages, profile updates, etc.
Rather than try to punish the spammer after they log in, why not just prevent them from registering in the first place?
I have experienced automated registration and profile spamming on previous forums. There are characteristics that do stand out and most of them include adding URLs in the profile – perhaps that should be or already is denied for a TL0 user.
I found some solutions that worked with add-ins/plug-ins/mods to eliminate most spammers. Before that I was banning users, blocking IPs, and spending too much time policing and cleaning up after the mess.
Why not tap into the already existing databases of known spammers? I am definitely not a plug-in developer. I hope perhaps this might inspire someone to consider the possibilities of using something like these solutions:
-
www.projecthoneypot.org – seems to work very well to stop folks from accessing the forums if they are a known spammer.
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StopForumSpam.com – ties in with the admin list of members and adds options to select users and check them against the database by e-mail address, IP address and username with a status returned (green=good, yellow=caution, red=blocked). The check can be automated at registration or run manually. If there are matches on at least two pieces of information, the user is allowed to register but is held in limbo until someone reviews the registration issue and decides their fate. There are some false positives occasionally. If a spammer slips through the cracks on registration, the solution also includes the ability to report them and update the database so they are blocked from all other subscriber sites.
Discourse might benefit from either or both of these resources as part of pre-registration.
As previously discussed, I think new user profile text should be sent to Akismet for vetting. You can search for prior testing we did with the services you mention, they are real spotty.
Is this happening now?
I just set up a personal forum and am allowing signup with approval required. Every day I get 5-10 spam accounts in the pending users list, which surprises me because I just set up this site and the user list is disabled. This did not seem to change when I enabled akismet.
Another question - if I delete pending users individually, I can choose to just delete or delete and add to IP blacklist. If I delete pending users in bulk via the pending user list, I don’t get that option. Does it blacklist them or not?
This does not currently happen, no.
我阅读了这里关于此话题的几个帖子，这是我找到的最“非挖坟”的一个，所以我决定在这里发帖：
几年来，我一直在运营一个小型的 Discourse 论坛，之前几乎没有什么垃圾注册活动。但在大约一周前更新后，这变成了一个严重的问题：现在我每天会收到超过 100 个注册。
虽然其他反垃圾功能将实际的垃圾帖子控制在了最低限度，但这些注册账号都被标记为可疑（这是正确的），导致我的通知被填满。我不得不逐一筛选，边处理边封禁和拉黑，才能找到真正需要我审核/管理的帖子。
所以，我的问题是：论坛软件最近是否有某些变化，例如默认设置的更改等，导致我需要调整某些设置以恢复之前的行为？无论是从源头上阻止垃圾注册，还是仅仅不让它们出现在我的通知中，让我可以忽略它们直到它们因不活跃被自动删除？
编辑：看起来有一个复选框选项是“工作人员必须审核所有可疑账号”，我已经取消勾选了它，并将“清理不活跃用户的天数”间隔缩短为非常短的时间（我正在尝试设为 2 天）。
这些是实际注册并确认了邮箱的账户吗？每天 100 个数量相当大，比我们任何客户网站看到的都要多。你能提供一张截图和一些详细信息吗？我想弄清楚这到底是怎么回事。
嘿，抱歉回复晚了。自从取消勾选上述复选框后，我就没再遇到这个问题，但为了收集一些数据给您，我刚刚又把它勾选上了。
我认为这些账号确实已被确认，但它们的信任等级从未超过 0 级，因为它们存在的唯一目的就是在个人资料中放置垃圾链接（通常与某些澳大利亚房地产公司有关……）。
一旦获得更多信息，我会更新此帖子。谢谢 
嗯，这是个好消息！
我担心的是，如果垃圾邮件发送者发现他们需要达到 TL1（信任等级 1），但这确实也意味着他们需要付出显著更多的额外工作（例如阅读时间、参与的话题数量等），所以他们可能不会这么做。