Help Save The Alice Community! -- Join In The Fight Against Spam!

[dubastot]

Welcome Mr. Slater. Nice to see a new authoritative member on board.

[x2495iiii]

Found the source of the spam. Some stupid ISP in Bangladesh called Bangaliwimax.

Found a list of all their IP addresses as well. There are a ton of them, and it looks like they're using all of them to register different accounts to get around the IP ban feature.

We could ban each and every address on the list, though it would take hours and restrict anyone in using that ISP legitimately from registering an account on the boards. Any thoughts?

EDIT: On second thought, looks like I can't do that. I can ban users, but not IP Addresses.

[David B]

Originally Posted by x2495iiii

Any thoughts?

Why not wait for the bots to join, and when they do, ban the I.P. address, and for the reason, say...

Your I.P. address has been banned because your Internet Service Provider has misused this forum to spam. To use this forum, please drop an e-mail to (insert e-mail address here), and please include the number that appears on http://www.whatismyip.com/ in your e-mail.

This is, obviously, somewhat long. Would you mind telling me where you found the source of the spammers? I would like to watch out for them on my forum, as it is only a matter of time before they find the thread in which my forum URL is in, and when that happens, I want to be ready to start killing bots.

[x2495iiii]

Originally Posted by David B

Why not wait for the bots to join, and when they do, ban the I.P. address

That's what we're doing already. Did you read my post? They're finding ways around the IP ban, and one of them is using a ton of different IPs.

And I just resolved the IP addresses of a few of the spammers to find the source, then used Google to find the list.

[David B]

Originally Posted by x2495iiii

That's what we're doing already. Did you read my post? They're finding ways around the IP ban, and one of them is using a ton of different IPs.

And I just resolved the IP addresses of a few of the spammers to find the source, then used Google to find the list.

I read the post, but I don't think it matters, because as you said...

Originally Posted by x2495iiii

EDIT: On second thought, looks like I can't do that. I can ban users, but not IP Addresses.

[x2495iiii]

I can't, but someone else, like an admin, might be able to.

Which was the point of my post.

[MrMoke]

If the spammers are currently coming from a single source, then they are most likely getting the IP addresses from an authorized Internet Service Provider.
ISP's are allocated a specific block of addresses which they are allowed to distribute to their customers.

Get the Carnegie Mellon Network Guru's involved. Have them add a filter to the default gateway that blocks all incoming traffic from the range of IP addresses that are assigned to that ISP.

If it is successful, several outcomes may be possible:
1) Access for all customers of the ISP will be prohibited.
2) If nobody from Bangladesh complains, no problem.
3) If a lot of customers complain, the ISP will have to clean-up the mess to get back on.

[beachbum111111]

Doesn't the alice forums have capchta (Or however you spell it) When you register?

[arty-fishL]

I'm not sure if action has been taken, the spammers have given up or I'm just popping onto the forums right after all of the spam has been cleared out, but in the past 12 hours or so I have came on several times and there was no spam any time I looked.

[x2495iiii]

It's still happening, but it's considerably less intense. At one point there we easily over 200 spam posts made in the span of 12 hours. Now it's closer to one or two.