Aggressive Email Banning

[howinfo]

We have been running our forum about 5 months now and we have banned about 30 email addresses that have been only used buy spamming purposes. So I was wondering if somebody who has been running a forum for years, they must have quite big banned email list and if they would want to share it with me so I could just add it to my list and it would save me lot of work in the future.

[grim]

I dont' even bother banning emails

[howinfo]

I was hoping that it would help more but in reality it maybe has decreased spam only 5% or even less.
They all switched to Google mail, hotmail and so on, so you are right I suppose, it is more waste of time than anything else.

[grim]

they just use different emails via bots, email banning is really not very effective in my experience

[howinfo]

they just use different emails via bots, email banning is really not very effective in my experience

I must agree, you where totally right. Six months later and I must admit email banning is not that effective at all, I think it might have helped at some degree but it has been certainly more work than anything else.

[avguste]

My suggestion would be to ban by IP and IP range.
Then create a section or use GetSatisfaction for ban appeals. Those that are real and want to be unbanned would then need to post a ban appeal, providing their IP, location and other information as pertaining.

[thewebmistress]

only 30 emails? Wow you are lucky. I think the russian spamming robot had list my forum as an easy target. Even when I banned IP addresses they were still spamming the crap out of the forum finding new way to enter their crap.

In the end, I have to approve each person that comes in and all of their posts have to be approved for a month before I let them post stuff without being monitored.

[vectro]

My suggestion would be to ban by IP and IP range.

That's how it's done.

[timpane]

yeah i am agree with you that Six months subsequent and I should accept internet note banning is not that productive at all, I believe it might have assisted at some stage but it has been absolutely more work than any thing else.

[webdude]

You should check out some anti spam plugins for vBulletin.

[arul5]

I think you do not need to have a fairly large email list, just that you only need to check his emails at any time and remove it.
Listen
Read phonetically

[WebKarim]

Some people do take it too far, I've come across a few forums that just ban email domains altogether... I tried to sign up to myprotein.co.uk forums and told me "sorry your email is banned".. my firs thought was oh really? I tried a few other email addresses and realised they banned hotmail.com emails altogther.

It's very OTT imo, I think a balance has to be struck between making it easy for the end user and making mods life easy, it's clear in this case that the mods decided to make their life too easy, and make ordinary members pay. I don't use my domain email address much nor my ISP, because at least with public emails they have reliable spam detection policities, my web host doesn't and nor does my ISP, and if these email addresses are used too often it will kill my inbox.

I think there are better banning methods than banning emails like using advanced bot detection tools on the registration page.

[pajojeff]

i think its better to be aggresive...than sorry... no harm in being careful and tough!cheers