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GMail Address Ban

edited January 2012 in Vanilla 2.0 - 2.8

Recently my forum has been combating a couple of spammers who use GMail. Although it is easy to block an email, Vanilla doesn't seem to recognize that GMail addresses can have periods anywhere. It considers each email different.

ie: somefakeemail@gmail.com

We have blocked somefakeemail@gmail.com, but the same person has been registering using some.fake.email@gmail.com, some.fakeemail@gmail.com, s.omefakeemail@gmail.com, somefakeema.il@gmail.com, etc., moving or adding periods wherever he or she wants. We have banned all the variations that were added.

Is there a way to change this? Ideally, Vanilla should strip periods from all GMail emails when banning them or comparing them to the ban list.

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Answers

  • 422422 Developer MVP
    edited January 2012

    Use pregmatch or wildcard such as *@gmail.com i think will go check

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  • 422422 Developer MVP

    yes I think *@gmail.com will work.

    BUT I wouldnt do it..

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  • alot of people are using google mail these days, you shouldnt block gmail. speaking of wich, dont forget googlemail.com is the same host, so you would have to block these too, and thats most likely death to your community.

  • use akismet, and stopforumspam

    grep is your friend.

  • edited January 2012

    I already use the stop forum spam plugin, but it doesn't block these registrations.

    I know how to create a text replacement function/method in PHP, but where in the code would I use it?

  • AoleeAolee Hobbyist & Coder ✭✭

    do you see the user's ip? i suspect its coming from only one ip source. try to get the ip and block it in htaccess.

  • Domos123Domos123 New
    edited January 2012

    if it's only periods they're adding, you could do *s*o*m*e*f*a*k*e*e*m*a*i*l*@gmail.com, but they could always just remove one of those characters and it would still allow them...

  • Aolee
    do you see the user's ip? i suspect its coming from only one ip source. try to get the ip and block it in htaccess.

    It's a pending user. I don't know how to look up those IPs.

  • 422422 Developer MVP
    edited January 2012

    We can give you script to grab all visitor ip,s and email results to you. We use it to monitor site activity. If your server isnt set up correctly it will be no use.

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  • Shouldn't it be part of the registration to take the IP and use it to possibly ban spammers preemptively?

  • 422422 Developer MVP
    edited January 2012

    How could you do that pre emptively though. You can add ip ranges and countries etc. To your access list and redirect them to some porn site lol

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  • Anyway, you can see their IP when logged in as an admin by looking at their profile

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