Help with Spammer

[Bill-Kill]

My forum is currently experiencing a problem with a persistent spammer. He keeps re-registering under proxies and sending out multiple spam PMs to our members. He also harasses me and the other admin over MSN. We have asked him numerous times to stop spamming us, and in return he asks us to do two posts a day on his forum. He keeps trying to discourage us from continuing our forum, since it is doing much better than his forum, and he is very jealous of us. He recently "bought" vBulletin. I say "bought" since I used to work with him, and he ALWAYS wanted to use nulled vBulletin, but I would always convince him not to.

Anyways, if he really did buy vBulletin, do you think there is a way that Jelsoft could get him to stop? Also, is there any feature on vBulletin that can help me with this problem, other than monitoring all new registrations?

All help is appreciated. Thanks!

[ssslippy]

Well if he is using an illegal version of you can report it here
http://www.vbulletin.com/piracy.php

[tipoboy]

the way i deal with people like this, is by moderating all new registrations, i know you are unhappy going down this route but doing this even for a few weeks may discourage him from continuing. Then in a few weeks re-visit the situation.

just out of curiosity how many new registrations do you get per day on adverage, if you dont mind me asking??

[DivisionByZero]

Where's this guy from?

[Bill-Kill]

He is from the UK.

We get different amounts, the average is probably around 4-5 a day, we have been hitting a slow spot though recently for the past week on registrations. We are still relatively new.

And it turns out it isn't pirated, he doesn't know how to install it, so we can access his install page, and it is on the customer number area, I know nulled boards don't show that.

[DivisionByZero]

I was going to say... if he was from china, australia or another one of the nations that is overrun by problem children, do what I do... I block all chinese IP space and all australian IP space from all my networks, right off the bat. That alone filters 99% of the worlds spam and other BS.

is this guy using a completely different network (ISP) to target you?

[Marco van Herwaarden]

And it turns out it isn't pirated, he doesn't know how to install it, so we can access his install page, and it is on the customer number area, I know nulled boards don't show that.
That is no proof of him being licensed or not. Some of the nulled do have a customernumber prompt.

Just report the site.

[Bill-Kill]

That is no proof of him being licensed or not. Some of the nulled do have a customernumber prompt.

Just report the site.

We sent in a support ticket to Jelsoft about him also, and in there warned them it might be pirated.

I block all chinese IP space and all australian IP space from all my networks

We couldn't do that, since one of our sponsors is from Australia, and we can't have him banned.


is this guy using a completely different network (ISP) to target you?

I'm not quite sure what you mean by this, but what he did was use his original IP address, then once we blocked that one, kept using proxies to get past us and PM spamming our members.

[Dean C]

Moderate new users until they get 10 posts and don't allow them to send PMs, then move them into a new usergroup which gives them permission to send PMs. Make it difficult for him, don't give him attention, and he'll soon get bored :) Also you can ban people using proxies as PHP sends a header a lot of the time that indicates they are using one :)

[davidw]

There's always Tachy...

[Bill-Kill]

Sorry if I sound ignorant, but what is tachy?

Also you can ban people using proxies as PHP sends a header a lot of the time that indicates they are using one

How can you do this?

[calorie]

vB ACP -> vBulletin Options -> User Banning Options -> Tachy Goes to Coventry:

This option allows you to effectively add a user or users to every member's 'Ignore List'. However, users in this list can still see their own posts and threads...

[Bill-Kill]

Oh, but that still requires us adding his new names every time also, since he registers a new name with each new IP address.

[AngelBlue]

I wrote a post here (https://vborg.vbsupport.ru/showthread.php?p=1370220#post1370220) about how to secure your forum against people who ban evade using proxies. Apart from that, all I can suggest is setting your MSN/etc to only accept messages from people on your contacts list.