Signup abuse detection and blocking

Signup abuse detection and blocking [Paid] 1.20.4

No permission to buy ($45.00)
What am I missing that I'm having to moderate people with a gmail account. Cheers.
  • Moderated. Unknown email domain failed: gmail.com

Can't recall ever looking at it. And now I have. I don't understand it.

+1|*@outlook.com
+1|*.info
+1|*@laposte.net
+1|....@
+10|*@trashmail.ws

Sorry I'm confused. So why did I have to whitelist gmail?
As it is clearly written in the description of the add on:

This is not a turn-key solution, and each site may require customization!

This add on is complex and can (but also must) be configured to suit you individual needs (or those of your forum) and the behaviour of your users. This is an advantage as obviously needs and behavior differ between forums and obviously there is neither a "one size fits all" nor would it be possible to create a default config that fits your forum optimally. Though the possiblity of individual configuration of the patterns and their individual weight the wide number of patterns to take into account by this add on is possible at all and this is why it works so well. If you are not willing to learn what this add on does and how it works and to create your individual configuration it is simply not for you. This is not a failure of the add on or it's author.
 
So why did I have to whitelist gmail?
You don't have to. You can adjust the score users with Gmail addresses will get. However: It is a bit problematic as many legitimate users do use gmail-addesses (depending from your audience) but it is clear as water that gmail along with yahoo are the mail addresses that are most used by spammers when trying to register. So it is a bit of a tough choice how to score it.
 
but it is clear as water that gmail along with yahoo are the mail addresses that are most used by spammers when trying to register. So it is a bit of a tough choice how to score it.
Just to touch on this, we processed ~28,600 registrations in FY25. We found that just blocking the '.' method in gmail addresses AND the at-risk ASN's, eliminated about 98% of spammers trying to use gmail accounts. There are a couple of sites out there using gmail temp addresses like "somethingrandom+owpvo@gmail.com" and those were easy to pickup and blacklist with a filter. We don't see much Yahoo anymore these days.

We see crazy nonsense more often now that looks like this:

1775645395300.webp
That particular ASN is driving a lot of trash...

In those cases, SFS does a pretty decent job of snagging them first. We did also lockout non-standard TLDs like .casino, etc.
There was a lot of attempted trash coming from them.
 
The default for the "Non-allowed email action" option (aka action on unknown email domain) is "none" which does nothing but log it is unknwon. Someone changed this option to "moderate".

You can either add gmail.com to the allow list so it gets registered as a known email domain and gets a score of '0' or change the "Non-allowed email action" option back to "none".

I also recommend my free option history add-on, so you've got history of when options are changed and by who. Which makes troubleshooting configuration for Signup Abuse Detection ad Blocking add-on sane.
 
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