Does gmail allow sign-ups from Russia?

Factual Questions
1

I run a message board that has been around in various versions since 1999.

In the past 18 months or so I have noticed that a lot of sign ups are spammers. In fact they are spammer bots that apply for membership on vB and phpBB boards without any human intervention. Once they are signed up, the bots post a spammy message on various forums.

Since I review each sign up for approval, and can view their IP address and email address, I normally catch them before they try to push Viagara and asian porn clips on my membership.

It seems that there are all kinds of free email services that these guys use for the email address and I have a ban list of over 250 but I have never seen a spammer use a gmail address to sign up to my board.

So, does Google not allow someone with a Russian/Eastern European IP to sign up?

BTW, the subject of my site is a particular football team as in American Football so with the exception of a few Brits and German members (and a Dane) the membership resides in the US. Hence I can use IP info to weed out nefarious activity.

2

I am sure they might. With Gmail you either need a phone number or an invite to sign up. To try and reduce spammers.

3

The spamming software that they use automatically creates accounts from gawab.com (and the hundreds of other domain names offered by the Egyptian Web mail service), mail.ru, cashette.com, and some other .ru and .ua web-based mail providers. If you want my blacklist of high-risk Web-based email providers, drop me a PM.

I get a quite a bit of forum spam from Gmail users, but it’s almost always manual – a real human, not a bot – and it’s almost always from India.

4

I am Russian and have family in Russia that uses gmail accounts.

5

:confused:

Gmail has been open to anyone for registration for some time, no invite or cell phone number needed