Spammers - Important, Please Read

CaptPatrick · Post by **CaptPatrick** » Oct 2nd, '08, 19:19

Lately the degree of spam registrations has been increasing to a point that I'm getting as many as 8 - 10 an hour. That's what it used be per day...

Of all the spam registrations, by far the most are using Gmail as there email address. Maybe as much as 90%. Most of the rest are using googlemail or Hotmail.

I am strongly considering banning altogether any registration from either of these three domains.

This would affect some of you that are legitimately using a gmail or hotmail account. It would mean that you would also be banned through association.

The solution for those of you affected would be to change your registered email address to a standard, major ISP account. All of you have that already; comcast, earthlink, bellsouth, sprint, att, etc.

Your email, (and other user suppied info), is accessable by clicking on "Profile" at the top of any bulletin board page.

Most of our members already use an email address from their ISP. You won't get spam by using your real email address here since the address is not shown on the website and only qualified & approved members can use the email function.

The only other inconvenience will be that when you change your email address in your profile, the script sometimes deactivates your profile for re-approval by an Administrator. Generally I catch these as, or shortly after, they happen. I will re-activate immediately as I see one. Or you can email me with your revised email address & I will make the modification to your profile from the admin control panel.

If I do ban the entire domains of gmail, googlemail, & hotmail, it'll be sometime next week in order for some of to make the necessary change.

Sorry for the inconvenience...

Best regards,

Patrick

DRIFTER31 · Post by **DRIFTER31** » Oct 4th, '08, 19:03

Ban those SOB's

Tommy · Post by **Tommy** » Oct 4th, '08, 21:57

Patrick,

Go for it. It's not right for you to get hammered by the spammers, and your regulars will make whatever adjustment that's necessary. we appreciate what you do for us.

Tommy

nic · Post by **nic** » Oct 5th, '08, 03:48

I'm a gmail guy..I'll try one of those others...going up!

Nic

CaptPatrick · Post by **CaptPatrick** » Oct 5th, '08, 06:43

Nic,

Please use a ligit ISP here...

The list of "Free" anonymous web based email site only starts with gmail, google mail, & hotmail, but even yahoo mail is an offender. Spammers are forced, in the large part, to use web based mail services because they would have to pay too money to secure an ISP account & the major ISPs would boot them out quickly due to their activities.

Almost all major ISPs also have web based email for their customers. Using that service would allow you to check you email online without the potenial dange of down loading raw email to directly to you computer, if that is a concern.

You can keep your gmail account for all other web activities.

I'm sorry for the inconvenience to you guys, of even thinking about this measure, but the asswipes using spam bots are growing geometerically.

Br,

Patrick

Brewster Minton · Post by **Brewster Minton** » Oct 5th, '08, 07:30

Will "@msn.com" email adresses be restricted as well? I have an "@msn.com" account and my understanding is that all of these accounts are paid for by the user.. Let me know, if so I can switch the address..

CaptPatrick · Post by **CaptPatrick** » Oct 5th, '08, 08:03

Brewster,

NO! Ligit domain mail servers, (bertram31.com, frankdoor.com, southeastmarine.com, mcmaster.com, etc), will not be banned. Were a spammer to use a domain other than gmail.com, googlemail.com, or hotmail.com, he/she would be delt with in the same manual fashion that I doing now.

I am only considering banning the most flagrant three: gmail.com, googlemail.com, & hotmail.com

Most spammers leave false email addresses anyway, but these three are the most used. If I can cut out the majority of the attempts by the ban, I will be happy. There is no guarentee that even this measure will work, or at best work for long.

Spammers are like any other scumbag crook. The more you do to protect your assets from them, the more they do to gain access.

I'm also looking into some other ways of protecting the our board...

Br,

Patrick

IRGuy · Post by **IRGuy** » Oct 5th, '08, 10:10

Capt Pat...

I use AOL for all my email activity, and have noticed that in the past 3-4 months the amount of spamcrap their automatic filter intercepts has doubled or perhaps even tripled. I have read that overall, there is much more spamcrap sent over the internet than there is legitimate email.

The spamcrappers use automatic bots to crank out millions of spamcrap messages every day, while moderators like you have to fight them manually.. you can't win. If the ISPs can't stop them, you don't stand a chance. So.. make whatever changes you need to so you don't waste your time.. so you will have more usable time to answer our questions, or maybe even make a few more $$$ doing whatever you do in your "spare" time. We can adjust to whatever changes you need to make.. after all, it is to our benefit that you spend less time dealing with the spamcrappers.

It is impossible for me to list all the benefits I personally get from the B31 forum, and I am not alone in saying this. Plus, I have made many friends I will probably never meet here as well.

Thanks again for making this site a great place for all of us to have available.

CaptPatrick · Post by **CaptPatrick** » Oct 5th, '08, 11:02

I have read that overall, there is much more spamcrap sent over the internet than there is legitimate email.

Frank,

One of the down sides to owning a popular website, (1.3 million hits for the month of September), is the volume of spam emails I download daily.

While i don't waste much time calculating the ratio of spam messages to ligit emails that I get, the approxomate numbers are 1 good message for every 100 spam messages. And those are the spam messages that aren't caught by the mail server & have to be deleted manually.

When I am out of town for as little as two days, I come back to over 400 or so messages to scan through. When I was away in Panama for the UVI-7, it took about 3 hours to download, scan, and clean up my email client. I think there were less than 30 ligit emails in the pile.

The spamcrappers use automatic bots to crank out millions of spamcrap messages every day...

Worldwide, more like millions per minute... A single spammer, using a spambot & a foriegn email host that specializes in hosting the spammers, can send out tens of thousands of messages per hour. Multiply that capability by the tens of thousands of spammers & spam hosts out there and you start getting the big picture. Mind boggling.

The millions of Internet Administrators and IT gurus that have been fighting the spammers for over a decade, and never quite keeping up, are truely out matched by programers that develop the spam software.

If ever there's a single issue that brings the Internet to it's knees, it'll be spam...

Br,

Patrick

scenarioL113 · Post by **scenarioL113** » Oct 5th, '08, 12:08

Do what needs to be done, I use gmail as well and will change to a different email service for this site.

It is no big deal, no one is being asked to change their email, just the email this site uses to identify you.

CaptPatrick · Post by **CaptPatrick** » Oct 5th, '08, 15:41

OK, Guys,

I'm going to run a test on banning just gmail.com and see both how effective it is and how much "hate" or "help" mail I get from the group...

Br,

Patrick

CaptPatrick · Post by **CaptPatrick** » Oct 6th, '08, 09:18

Just an update since banning all forms of gmail...

During the course of the day on Sunday, before 4 pm, there were a total of 49 gmail registrations in a 12 hr period; 4 per hour... an overall total of 54 spam registerations were submitted; 5 using other mail servers.

As of this morning, 14 hrs later, only 4 spam registrations using other servers were awaiting my attention.

Quite a dramatic change, to say the least.

Once the spammers catch on to the gmail ban, I'm pretty sure that they will start using hotmail or something similar. Hotmail will likely be the next server to be banned.

Please, if you haven't done so already, make any necessary change to your email address or email me with a new email address & your username.

This ain't Iraq, but it is war... I want to avoid collateral damage, or at least keep it to a minimum!

Br,

Patrick

Mikey · Post by **Mikey** » Oct 6th, '08, 10:07

Git'em Pat!

CaptPatrick · Post by **CaptPatrick** » Oct 15th, '08, 13:08

OK, you guys using hotmail as an email address are safe...

Banning gmail & it's variants only seems to be doing the trick, so I hereby backoff of any intention, at this time, to ban hotmail.

For those of you who were affected, again my apologies for the inconvenience & thanks for your understanding.

Br,

Patrick

Spammers - Important, Please Read

Spammers - Important, Please Read

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