The posts came from India.
We’re talking about the jewelry posts? Because I thought they mentioned New Zealand by name. If an Indian spammer is posting for an NZ company, it indicates a much higher level of organization that I had suspected.
We only have one repeat offender who really causes us a lot of grief right now, and that’s the guy who posts the +91 phone numbers and all of the voodoo astrology crap. When tonyfop said “He’s Baaaaack!” it referred to this one particular problem spammer.
The jewelry post you referred to came from Japan. We don’t get much spam from Japan these days. That was a one-off oddball spammer.
Indian and Pakistani spammers post spams for folks all over the world. It’s much more organized than i think you suspected. It’s not uncommon to see an Indian or Pakistani spammer link to something like a dentist in Chicago or a supplier of building materials in the UK. These types of spams probably constitute the largest percentage of our spam here, and they are difficult to block because we have legitimate users using the same ISPs that the spammers use.
The other ones that are difficult to block are the Romanian watch free movie spams because we’d pretty much have to block the entire country to get rid of them.
We have one spammer from the Philippines who often posts links to things in Australia and New Zealand. He also often likes to claim that he’s from California. I don’t know why. Maybe he really likes Hollywood or something. He only shows up a few times per month and often gets banned before he even posts anything, so he’s definitely not the problem child that Mr. Indian Voodoo Astrologer is.
For those who are curious, this is where our spam has come from in the last couple of weeks:
India
Pakistan
Romania
Romania
Korea
India
Denmark
Philippines
Atlanta
Serbia
Pakistan (selling jewelry in Australia)
Salt Lake City
India *
India
India
India *
Bangladesh (selling Spanish life insurance)
Redmond, Washington
India *
India
Romania
NSW Australia
New York
Wisconsin
Philippines (claiming to be a girl from Florida)
India
Romania
India *
Florida (pretending to be in New York)
San Jose +
India
India *
New Jersey
Taiwan
California
Salt Lake City
Pakistan
India
Zurich, Switzerland
Canada with Indian e-mail address
India
India
India (posting in Danish, linking to a Danish web site)
New York
India *
San Jose +
Philippines
India
Philippines
India
Nigeria
Pakistan
India *
Poland
India*
Illinois
India *
Philippines
Utah
India *
England
Florida
San Jose +
India
India *
India
Pakistan
Singapore
San Jose +
India *
Utah
San Diego
Japan
India *
Salt Lake City
Bangladesh
- These are all our tantric voodoo love astrologer spammer
- These San Jose spammers are actually Chinese spammers. Some of the Chinese spammers have set up ISPs in California to get around country bans.
ETA: I knew all the time it was the fucking Swiss. And Bill Gates.
What, nothing from Thailand? I’ll have to see what I can do about that.
The sheer futility of it all has a certain fascination… you can’t help pondering about what sort of person(s) can’t see the forlorn waste of effort it is.
Probably a poor person who gets paid enough for making the effort, no matter how many time it gets caught.
Moderate New Registrations Based On IP Geographical Origin
This vBulletin plugin has been invaluable for screening new members from countries where there’s there’s a high ratio of spammers to legitimate users, such as India, Indonesia, the UAE, and the like.
As for countries like Russia, China, Poland, Ukraine, Philippines, and those where 99.99% of all new members are spammers? IP blocks. Preventing spam, scraping, and hacking takes precedence over the one-in-a-thousand chance of blocking out a legitimate user, accommodating legitimate users who might be visiting Moscow or Minsk for a week, or appeasing those who believe country blocking is an act of bigotry.
Elmwood. You’re my friend. Your board and your banning of countries is understandable. The SDMB has a more inclusive policy. We can’t ban countries.
Sam
Not even Sweden?
How about the United States?
Nm