Classifieds Spamming

[Eric Barnes]

I am doing some research on spam and I was wondering how many of you get fraud listings or totally spam listings? And if so is there something unique in all the spam you get?

For example:

• They register with more than username
• They price to item to low than the actual value
• The listing is in a broken language

[juven14]

I'd like to see an included page like about/home to cover the typical types of classifieds scams and alerts. It seems like most sites would need something like this to keep their customers informed and since this would be universal it benefit all classifieds owners.

One such scam I noticed effecting my customers was a guest using the email form was trying to convince ad owners to accept an over priced money order, which does get cashed but bounces like a week later, leaving them without payment and additional fees for the conterfiet money order or check.

Just having info about common scams like this right off the bat would help classifieds owners become aware of these scams and the ability to inform their users.

One way to help combat these would be a log containing the ips of people using the email form, and the to/from info so action can be taken by an admin once they are notified of potential scams. With the log info you could contact any other ad owner who was contacted by the scammer and initiate a warning as well as ban the scammer by ip.

Just my 2 cents.

[civ]

This is a daily battle for us - not just spam either, but outright fraud.

We have implemented CVV2 & AVS checking into our CC processing (Linkpoint API) and although our listings are activated immediately upon payment, we screen them daily.

We are also now checking IPs when visitors use our contact forms and screening out certain countries (preventing the emails from reaching the listing owner and notifying us instead).

Regarding your questions Eric, those items you listed are things we look for, but they are not always consistent. The "smart" ones will copy a legit ad on another site for instance, to get around the language barrier. A Google search of portions of the ad text brings that to light though.

They always use free email too - that's something we watch for.

I sympathize with those running popular free classified sites - I can't imagine the amount of spam/fraud that they have to deal with.

[Eric Barnes]

Yea that is what I was figuring. I was trying to come up with a solution that would not approve ads if they had a certain caracteristic (sp).

While I was researching I did come accross this article:
http://www.websitepublisher.net/arti...argetting-php/
Which does seem to offer some possibilities including disabling the login or registration if they are not from your country. Or disabling the contact form if they are not from the same country as the ad poster.

Of course on our motorcycle classifieds site they seem to always be using an aol ip address which makes it almost impossible to track.

[civ]

For IP verification checkout http://www.maxmind.com & http://www.ip-to-location.com - both are priced very reasonably and one even has weekly IP-db updates.

[SkGold]

Originally Posted by civ

This is a daily battle for us - not just spam either, but outright fraud.

It this same for us.

Originally Posted by suzkaw

While I was researching I did come accross this article: http://www.websitepublisher.net/arti...argetting-php/
Which does seem to offer some possibilities including disabling the login or registration if they are not from your country. Or disabling the contact form if they are not from the same country as the ad poster.

It seems like good stuff. Eric, I will be very interested if you can implemented this in 68C

Originally Posted by civ

We are also now checking IPs when visitors use our contact forms and screening out certain countries (preventing the emails from reaching the listing owner and notifying us instead).

CIV, if you can, could you please tell how you do it.

[frommarcq]

Hi guys,
I've just opened this thread about this problem :
Display Country Flag (based on IP address) against fraud
This script is a good alternative to visually locate the real origin of a member.
Your point of view is welcome.
Regards
Pascal

[cwp]

Originally Posted by civ

I sympathize with those running popular free classified sites - I can't imagine the amount of spam/fraud that they have to deal with.

My website currently offers free classifieds - it is not powered by 68 though, but that doesn't makes any difference. I'm in the process of switching classified software to 68, which will be paid ads. The only type of bot spam I get is the bot registering for an account. They never go as far as placing a listing. Keep in mind that my software does not use captcha for registering. I think once I use 68 classifieds the spam will stop.

As I'm typing this I just got a new user to register, which is spam -

E-mail : [email protected]
Username : domplan
IP : 91.76.72.95


--- Additional fields ---
E-mail: [email protected]
Username: domplan
Password: -------------
First Name: ������� �����
Initial: ������� �����
Last Name: ������� �����
Web URL: ������� �����
Street Address: ������� �����
City: ������� �����
Zip: ������� �����
State/Country: --- United States ---
Job Title: Account Executive
Job Function/Dept.: General Management
Subscribe to: General Info & Updates

95% of the bots use .ru email addresses. If only the spam bots knew that registering on my site doesn't do them any good unless they confirm their email address.

[Lhotch]

Also keep in mind there are hundreds of free proxy servers that people can use to hide their true IP address so using that it best a speed bump.

[Eric Barnes]

I wonder if something like akismet would catch signup spam? We use it for our forums here and it does an ok job but still some gets through.