Banned Email Addresses

[Success]

Hi Eric,

Apart from Bad Words setting which is very effective in stopping spammers, the other is email banning, which makes it difficult for them to register another email to spam again.

I discover that we don't have the ability to ban certain email addresses from registering and posting.

Email Banning has 3 parts.

complete email banning (user@example.com)

partial email banning (@example.com)

domain extension banning (.pl .su .ua .ru)

damm those Russian spammers.
I am sure many of you running forums are being attacked constantly by these guys. Tip: try entering those 4 extension in your email banning list and you mass eliminate many of them.


Suggestion: Take a look at

vBulletin Options > User Banning Options > Banned Email Addresses


The below features are nice but the basic email banning above is more important.

"Agressive Email Banning"

"Banned IP Addresses"

[Lhotch]

Most web hosts allow IP and domain blocking at the site level, seems a bit redundant to do it at the software level also. Banning e-mail addresses IMHO is of limited use with the number of free e-mail hosts but if it helps I guess it cant hurt. You must be getting a lot of traffic to draw in a lot of spammers.

[Success]

I have not seen a webhost that offer registration email banning for your forum or classifieds.

I don't ban free email hosts, like gmail or hotmail, as you will be blanket banning all other legitimate users.

I ban the email address of troublemakers, so it requires them to register another email to spam again. They register again, I ban again. Eventually, they will get bored and stop.

I blanket ban the domain extension of spammer bots. They usually use a few similar domains and they can come by tens or hundreds per day.

For anyone who doubt registration email banning, try taking this feature off any active community, it will open the door to hell, unleashing the army of the dammed.

Of course, effective banning needs to work together with other features like effective captcha, IP banning and bad words censoring.

[Lhotch]

Originally Posted by Success

I have not seen a webhost that offer registration email banning for your forum or classifieds.

I specifically stated IP and domain which fits right into your blanket ban comments.

[Success]

I think we are on a slightly different track here.

Registration and htaccess banning are different.

If you blanket ban via registration, legitimate users are still able to visit your site but unable to register.

If you blanket ban via htaccess, it's a total ban.

Blanket ban is always the last resort.

But even IP banning via htaccess is not infallible as proxies are aplenty.

That's why effective banning needs to work in combination with email banning, IP address, captcha and bad words censoring.

[philoo]

Originally Posted by Lhotch

Most web hosts allow IP and domain blocking at the site level, seems a bit redundant to do it at the software level also. Banning e-mail addresses IMHO is of limited use with the number of free e-mail hosts but if it helps I guess it cant hurt. You must be getting a lot of traffic to draw in a lot of spammers.

I am 100% right with Success.

The problem is not only a spamming problem. We are in a classifieds business whose purpose is to generate transactions. Honest transactions, if we want to last. In this case, we can decently understand that some classifieds website choose to not accept free emails that swindlers can open Free in 3mn, without any identity control.

There is also the fact that Free emails are often opened as trash email, to not fill professional or personal main mailbox.

Finally, do not forget that free emails often die after a short delay of inactivity. On my current portal, I have hundreds of Hotmail accounts that died because their owner did not login 2 or 3 months. It create bounces and other problems because the portal continue to send them newsletters, notifications and other things ... it is a real problem !

So, I am also confident that an email banning (as described by Success) could be a nice enhancement of 68C