Yesterday I had a bunch of new sign-ups within a short period of time, not out of the ordinary considering I recently arranged an upcoming online chat with someone very popular in the industry my forum is based on. (Yay me!) They're the type that start off seemingly normal, posting hellos and plausible introductions, then their posts start getting slightly "off". They'll start making oblique sexual references by presenting the situation as a problem they're having and asking for advice, or offering help to other members (say, help with graphics, and then the graphic they post is bloody or obscene). I've deleted the offensive posts, tried the Miserable Users thing (didn't work, not sure why) and finally banned four accounts last night. (The accounts were all using different IP addresses but were either working together or one person controlling all of them.)

Now some of today's new sign-ups are doing the exact same thing, with different IP addresses as well. So banning by name, email address, and even IP doesn't work. This has happened before to my board (probably the same person if you ask me, the tone of the posts is the same) but the Miserable Users hack seemed to do the trick that time.

Up until now I've just been deleting and banning, deleting and banning. I don't show any reaction to them in public because then they'll know they've succeeded in making me upset, and that will only encourage them. I've considered using one of the emails they've used to register to write them and try to establish a dialogue, but I'm worried that will encourage them. Has anyone managed to get people like this to just go away?

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disabledNYC | The Chic Petite | Ice Cream Forum

I am assuming you are using vBulletin since you mention the Miserable Users mod...

Use the vBulletin feature called Tachy Goes to Coventry located in the vbadmin section:

vBulletin Options >> Banning Options >> Tachy Goes to Coventry

Then enter in their user id.

This will make their posts invisible to everbody on the board, but they will think that everyone can see them. Combine that with the miserable users mod, and eventually they will go away from sheer boredom, since nobody pays any attention to them.

Your only other option is to just keep banning them as they come in.

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Michael Sasek

osCMax - supercharge your e-commerce

Actually I'm using phpBB (sorry, I should have specified) with a port of the vBulletin Miserable Users mod, I just forget what they called it there. I've been making plans to switch everything over to vBulletin though. I guess if this continues I'll just have to step up my plans.

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disabledNYC | The Chic Petite | Ice Cream Forum

Sounds like the spam bots have found you. These aren't real people, just automated systems that register at forums and post this crap to advertise whatever porn or otherwise site they are programed to do.

One way you can deal with them if your software doesn't have to many anti spam options is to use wildcard and ban their email addresses. IP bans do nothing, as they just generate random ones. Let's say one registers with john@domain.com. Instead of entering john@domain.com into your banned emails, enter *@domain.com, and it will catch anyone using that domain as an email. It won't stop them entirely, but it helps cut them down a bit

Also make sure to turn on things like email verification, and image verification if you have them.

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- Check out our interviews with people in the design industry

You're really doing just about everything that you can/should. Keep up the banning and deleting. If you find that you can't catch them in a reasonable amount of time, then you may need to bring some extra sets of hands on board to help you out. As Michael has said, eventually these people will get tired/bored and leave...that is, if you can continue to kick them out quickly.

This is all assuming that they are in fact humans, which it does sound like they are...if they are bots, then your strategy changes, because bots do not get bored.

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...some super-sweet signature

I see you are using phpBB. I installed a few mods a while ago that TOTALLY cut down my spam count. It's practically zero.

I installed AntiSpam ACP, and a CAPTCHA on first post mod. They're excellent.

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They don't even post real links most of the times and they are very irritating - the anti-spamming question at registration helped me a lot to get rid of them.

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LightSabre, Chief-Editor @ Xenon Web Magazine™ - www.xenonweb.us
Digital Media-X™ Artist @ digitalmedia.xenonweb.us
Elisha Cuthbert International Website® - Elisha Fans Network™ - Community Leader

Well, it's been an interesting week.

I took the board down temporarily to upgrade it to vBulletin (which I'd been meaning to do anyway, but what better time?). After I was done I happened to check the site stats, and found a whole bunch of referrals from another forum. I don't wish to say the name of the forum in question, but suffice it to say it seemed to be a forum for trolls. Not a forum that happened to be full of trolls that a mod couldn't keep under control, but an actual forum for trolls to post links to sites they wanted to antagonize. I'd read about such places in an article once, but never been to one or been the subject of an "attack".

I couldn't use the search function without registering, so I went through several days' worth of posts until I found the thread about my board. Pretty surreal to read their posts basically laughing at some of the straight-edge members of my board and discussing what they were going to post next. Several complained that the mod (me) was a real stickler and had deleted their posts within the hour, ruining their fun. (I guess I should take that as a backhanded compliment )

One of the trolls said he was disappointed their attack hadn't been more fun but that he still wanted to "do something with this board". I bookmarked the thread and quietly placed all the accounts they had created into a usergroup requiring moderation. If they return, I'll go back to their board to monitor their "attack".

It was interesting to see trolls in their natural habitat Mind you, their forum didn't seem all that different from any you'd find here; they had many threads there that would be commonplace in any forum, discussing books, movies, products, looking for people to hang out with, etc. The major difference I saw was that no registration was required to post, and it was clearly unmoderated. (Well, duh.) Made me wonder how they'd react if I rallied the members of my board to go post a bunch of flowers and puppies on theirs....

Nah. I don't need that kind of stress in my life.

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disabledNYC | The Chic Petite | Ice Cream Forum

There's a forum for trolls? Some people are just very sick in the head...

Either way, you might want to look into setting up a .htaccess file that blocks all referrals from that site. That way, most will think that the site is down. And you can also use Tachy goes to Coventry, which will mean they think that everyone can see their posts but only they can. That'll soon make these "people" get bored of it.

I just can't get over the fact that there's a forum for forum trolls. It really makes you lose faith in humanity...

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LightSabre, Chief-Editor @ Xenon Web Magazine™ - www.xenonweb.us
Digital Media-X™ Artist @ digitalmedia.xenonweb.us
Elisha Cuthbert International Website® - Elisha Fans Network™ - Community Leader