Hello everyone,

When I last posted, I said that my board suddenly got a bunch of members (which is good) but there's one problem, and I'm starting to get a little paranoid about it...

See, a couple of the accounts I've noticed have these really odd names, and not ones that (IMO) would fit for characters in my particular setting. I have it in my head that they're going to start spamming the board at any moment, but they're not doing anything: no posting, no "Hey, how are you?", no spamming, they're just...sitting there...

Seriously, I'm starting to become paranoid, even their IP addresses are one number away from each other! (They're exactly the same, except the end number is different.)

Guess all I can do is wait, eh? But it's sort of creepy...

I hope they aren't, like, hackers or anything...

Krystal

Running a fantasy site I get that a lot. A name joins that could be a legitimate character (although usually missing the space between a first name and a last name) but actually turn out to be spambots.

What are the names? I may recogise them and then if they are the bots I had you can head them off early.

Well, the names of the members who haven't posted are:

Roopekk
ceenasumqeas
Choochenomy
EmogmaTal
Pearbeath
richardfiltrochinis

Then again, maybe they just have odd tastes in naming?
Some of them have weird e-mail addresses, like with .tv and .inu at the ends. Maybe it's for some country I've never heard of, but I'd appreciate it if you could point out any that look familiar.

Krystal

I regularly run unknown/suspicious IP addresses through a couple of search functions.

Stop Forum Spam. Found SFS when googling a couple of really bad spammers who'd turned up on my site. It's a godsend.

DNS Tools. Unclick 'Whois (Domain Name)' and click 'Whois (IP owner)'. If it's a Ukrainian, Russian, or Chinese IP, watch them like a hawk, even if they don't turn up on Stop Forum Spam.

edit: You can also run email addresses and usernames through SFS.

Awesome! Thanks so much! I'll run them through!

I removed them from my site in the past week. Or at least very similar spellings, maybe the addition of 1 or 2 letters.

:) I just ran all of them through, most of them were spam, a couple of them weren't in there, though (they might still be spammers, who knows?)

So I banned their IP addresses, so now I should delete their accounts too, right? Is there anything else I should do?

Delete the accounts, definitely. If they have dynamic IP addresses or other means of changing IP addresses -- it can be as easy as going to a different location -- they can still access the accounts. Depending on the board software, sometimes members can get information that guests can't. (For example, on mine, guests can't see members' email addresses, but registered members can).

Okay, I've banned their e-mail, IP, and account names and I've deleted their accounts, so that should stop them for now. :)

And I have the handy search tool if anyone else tries to ruin my fun.

You are a life saver. For a few weeks now, some stupid person (or bots, apparently) has been registering on my now defunct Star Wars games' board, responding to and making posts about...really weird things but obviously spamming. There was one about WoW or something at one point. But I went to this site and ran their IPs in the search and it turned out that they're bots. Hopefully their IPs actually stay banned...I turned off allowing new accounts, but there was still someone able to register and spam. Hopefully I can get them to stop posting and registering once and for all.

Always glad to help in the War on Spammers. :)

Good luck!