XF 2.2 Russian spam

[Larry Barasch]

Dozens of SPAM applications lately from a Russian hacker.
Goes by "RitaWhoCk595", with last 3 digits changed each time.
E-mail: ritacrogs054@mail.ru, again changing last 3 digits and e-mail providers each time.

We manually approve each applicant.
Spam blocker is working as designed (see photo below).
But its clogging up the Users>search for users folder where I un-check "User state: Valid" each day to check for new applicants who may be legit, but were flagged for a commonly spammed user name. In which case I send them an e-mail just asking them to pick a more unique name. Happens quite often.

Real pain deleting the numerous attempts which are automatically being blocked.
Uses (for now) same IP address: 185.255.96.99
I've added this IP address to the list of blocked ones, and the following banned e-mail addresses:
ritacrogs*@cc.com
ritacrogs*@hotmail.com
ritacrogs*@mail.ru
ritacrogs*@gmail.com

I'll add more as they come in. Don't think I can stop them going to pending users with invalid state. Have to (for now) delete them individually. Ugggh. I don't care if they show up in the "Spam Trigger Log", it's the User State thing that's taking up time.

Any way to keep these from going into the "unvalid" list and automatically have them deleted rather than me doing it manually?
Also do I have to keep adding "ritacrogs*@"e-mail provider, or can I just use "ritacrogs*@*" as a wild card to block all e-mail providers?

Thanks,
Larry

 

[Paul B]

can I just use "ritacrogs*@*" as a wild card to block all e-mail providers

Yes, wildcards are supported for banning.

 

[Larry Barasch]

Thanks.

 

[whynot]

can I just use "ritacrogs*@*" as a wild card

*ritacrogs*

would work as well.

 

[Larry Barasch]

Added. Thanks much.

As suggested by a friend, in an effort to avoid robot spammers I also added a question & answer CAPTCHA to our new member registration process:
Admin control panel -> Setup -> Options -> User registration.
This should help.

 

[Baby Community]

I used to have a lot of trouble with friend spam.. I haven't had any problems for a long time. I will definitely recommend you add-on

https://snogssite.com/resources/ozzmodz-login-spaminator.88/

https://snogssite.com/resources/ozzmodz-registration-spaminator.87/

 

[Baby Community]

I have no advertising purpose. The addon is so good that I found it very useful.

 

[Larry Barasch]

Thank you for the suggestion.
I think I'll see how what I've already done works and then consider an add-on. We're a real small forum, and this is the first time this has happened. It's more of an annoyance right now more than anything else. It also seems to have happened late evening through early morning. Guess we'll see what tomorrow brings.

 

[Baby Community]

every forum starts very small baby community was very small. Now it has been 5 years in the growth process. Spam attack happens when it is very small or very large. The important thing is that there is no spam attack... You can't be comfortable like this. I've tried so hard... no solution is definitive, except for the spaminator. I speak so clearly.