Here's what SPAM looks like

Mike Phillips · 03-20-2020, 08:14 AM

Here's what SPAM looks like

Normally in the morning, and a few times on-the-fly each day, including weekends and at night, I check the Admin Panel for new pending accounts. Each new account here on the AGO forum is looked at by a real human being to determine if they are a real human being or a spammer.

There are a number of different member types on any forum, for example if you're a member of this forum your category is Registered Users. After filling out the registration form, your account goes into a group called,

Users Awaiting Email Confirmation

That is, before a new member can get any further in the approval process, after submitting the registration form, they then have to check their e-mail for the verification e-mail our forum software sends them and in that e-mail is a link they need to click on to prove they registered with a real e-mail address.

Spammers do click the verification link and then end up in a queue called,

Users Awaiting Moderation

This is the queue I check for real people and spammers. I approve the real people and turn the spammers over to StopForumSpam.com

For those that don't click the verification link in the verification e-mail, they stay in the Users Awaiting Email Confirmation queue. This morning when I check on this group, here's what I found. This is the normal amount of spammers in this pending queue each day.

Look at the forum nicknames, they are almost always gobbledygook and the e-mail addresses are pretty much what you see in this screenshot, there are a lot more different usual suspect domains PLUS some spammers use hotmail, yahoo, gmail, etc.

And here's the normal give-away they are a spammer, instead of using an actual number for a Zip Code, be it here in the U.S.A. or another country, (we have people join from around the world), they also enter gobbledygook.

Anyway, I thought some of you might like to see what I see and what takes place behind the scenes of any well-run forum.

**IH8SPM** · 03-22-2020, 11:04 PM

Originally Posted by Mike Phillips

Here's what SPAM looks like

Normally in the morning, and a few times on-the-fly each day, including weekends and at night, I check the Admin Panel for new pending accounts. Each new account here on the AGO forum is looked at by a real human being to determine if they are a real human being or a spammer.

There are a number of different member types on any forum, for example if you're a member of this forum your category is Registered Users. After filling out the registration form, your account goes into a group called,

Users Awaiting Email Confirmation

That is, before a new member can get any further in the approval process, after submitting the registration form, they then have to check their e-mail for the verification e-mail our forum software sends them and in that e-mail is a link they need to click on to prove they registered with a real e-mail address.

Spammers do click the verification link and then end up in a queue called,

Users Awaiting Moderation

This is the queue I check for real people and spammers. I approve the real people and turn the spammers over to StopForumSpam.com

For those that don't click the verification link in the verification e-mail, they stay in the Users Awaiting Email Confirmation queue. This morning when I check on this group, here's what I found. This is the normal amount of spammers in this pending queue each day.

Look at the forum nicknames, they are almost always gobbledygook and the e-mail addresses are pretty much what you see in this screenshot, there are a lot more different usual suspect domains PLUS some spammers use hotmail, yahoo, gmail, etc.

And here's the normal give-away they are a spammer, instead of using an actual number for a Zip Code, be it here in the U.S.A. or another country, (we have people join from around the world), they also enter gobbledygook.

Anyway, I thought some of you might like to see what I see and what takes place behind the scenes of any well-run forum.

Check my username