What "red flags" give you early warning of a spam account?

When you get email notification of a new member, what usually indicates that the new account is about to post spam on your pristine forum? I've noticed (mostly on phpBB forums) that if the ICQ field is filled in, that usually means its a spammer; I think they must use it to track the effectiveness of their campaigns.

Another indicator is a .cn or .ru email address, and "Nike" "Air Jordans" or "shoes" in their username.

and my favorite is when they try to fly under the radar by using a common name like Jennifer, except they misspell it. Who misspells their own name?

 

SFS integration really stops 99.9% of them. The one in a thousand that gets through is most often a human and they generally display a bit of intelligence about the system we use in their first message or messages.

 

When they put "1111" as their preferred forum software, or how they found us.

 

I actually get a lot of human spammers, mostly from China, trying to sell knockoff sneakers.

 

It's pretty much all human spammers now days for me. The ones that sign up generally use a real name or numbers. I also still get a few with Viagra type names. Anyhow, my forum is small enough that it's easy for me to run every new IP address through the stop spam web sites. If it's listed, I go ahead and ban it. Now today I had that odd ball PM spammer where he would PM everyone instead of posting. His number wasn't listed in the Spam bot sites...one thing I need to see about getting listed.

 

So your saying having the ICQ field filled in, it can be a possible sign of a spammer? Interesting.

 

Yeah because not too many people use ICQ nowadays, but since spammer bots fill in random fields, you can safely assume that somebody who has filled in that field is a spammer.

I wouldn't base my decision on that alone, but it is a red flag.

 

I get very few spammers, haven't had one now for almost 2 months.

 

Interesting.

Many people I know still use ICQ today and I find them to be pretty legit users unless they're teasing me.

I usually can tell a user is a spammer once they begin to post random information in random forums that do not pertain to the content of the post. I mean, once or twice is okay, but more than three times, eh.

 

I can honestly say that I haven't come across more than say, 5 users on any community of mine that actually use ICQ.

 

I haven't come across much either, but that wasn't the point. The point was, I have come across a few.

One active user/super moderator at a forum I visit daily uses ICQ and she is definitely legit; she's a moderator, I hope.

But me, personally, I never found the point of ICQ. I guess it's like any other IM client.

 

I use ICQ

 

And you seem to be 100% legit.

 

Oh no, i'm a spammer promise

 

So, what is ICQ like, Riz?

 

And that's why I said:

 

I understand.

Enough said on that note, I don't like the way this is going.

 

I tend to memorize spammer behavior. I have 3 years of spam bot behavioral patterns locked in my head. I can read a very legit looking post and know it's a spammer who will spam their product in a week.

 

We have a drives profile field and is a required one (members input their vehicle), each time a spammer signs up they will always fill that field with their username.

Instant ban.

 

Username, e-mail address, noticed a lot of them are putting "google" or "google.com" as how they found it.