Metanet Forums

Yeah. My forum just opened and it's already got it's first real idiot.

someone had joined, caused problems, ripped the skin, threatened hacking and such. I ended up banning him IP and all and he came back under different names emails and IPs.

I've been forced to admin validate all new accounts because of this. Even reported them to the host.

My question here is, is there any other, more effective way to deal with this? I'm not using wildcards because the IP's change much to drastically for that to work.

I appreciate the help, thanks.

We're actually having some spam problems on the Metanet Forums like you wouldn't believe.

I can only say the best you can do is have a devoted team of administrators and moderators who you can trust.

Thankfully I do.


He's seemed to stop since the admin validation, but who knows. I hope he doesn't come back.

He's seemed to stop since the admin validation, but who knows. I hope he doesn't come back.

I'd say that's the smartest move.

Sniperwhere wrote:Thankfully I do.


He's seemed to stop since the admin validation, but who knows. I hope he doesn't come back.

maybe hes using proxy ips.
try to find a similarity in usernames if you are unsure

Yeah. His most recent was "lololololol." I think we've got it covered, thanks man.

Why not report to his ISP? I did that once...

Techno wrote:Why not report to his ISP? I did that once...

If they're not violating the law, it's in the ISP's interest to protect their customers' privacy. Given that this policy has likely helped you in the past (even if you didn't know it), it's really the best way for them to operate.

As for persistent spammers, the best thing you can do is not to feed the troll.

scythe33 wrote:

Techno wrote:Why not report to his ISP? I did that once...

If they're not violating the law, it's in the ISP's interest to protect their customers' privacy. Given that this policy has likely helped you in the past (even if you didn't know it), it's really the best way for them to operate.

As for persistent spammers, the best thing you can do is not to feed the troll.

Au contrar... The ISP's interest is avoiding legal trouble, which means dealing with possible abusers promptly. While policy varies by ISP, most ISPs have itchy trigger fingers and will take action against users who are causing spam problems quite willingly. and keep in mind that if the Terms of Service for your forum prohibits spamming, and the user has been notified that his posting is considered spamming in compliance with your ToS, what this person is doing is, in fact, illegal. If you notify the ISP via their proper abuse notification channel (which, 99% of the time, is emailing abuse@[ispdomain]) they will at minimum forward the abuse notification to the customer's billing account, which is probably going to be this kid's parents. If nothing else, the legal notification that an abuse notice constitutes enough of a threat that he'll probably stop. If he doesn't, continue to contact the ISP. If ISPs recieve enough abuse notices about a user, they'll usually start with a phone call, and then go to terminating the account.

If you're really ticked (or legitimately concerned), and the user has made threats of illegal activity ('hacking'), you can report the user to the FBI internet crime center (or your country's equivalent), which will probably not take action against the user, but does keep logs of complaints (so if you're not the only one having problems with him, the FBI-ICC will know and can take appropriate action, which is typically sending abuse notices to the ISP. Of course, being the FBI, their abuse notices have a fair bit more weight than yours). If the user posts anything constituting p0rnography*, then, for your own protection, immediately report it to the FBI and the office your state Attorney General.

*Yes, this is out of style for me. Turns out my school district blocks requests with a certain word in the POST data.

Well, the problems over now. The guy is gone(hopefully for good) and things have settled down.

jean-luc wrote:

scythe33 wrote:

Techno wrote:Why not report to his ISP? I did that once...

If they're not violating the law, it's in the ISP's interest to protect their customers' privacy. Given that this policy has likely helped you in the past (even if you didn't know it), it's really the best way for them to operate.

As for persistent spammers, the best thing you can do is not to feed the troll.

Au contrar... The ISP's interest is avoiding legal trouble, which means dealing with possible abusers promptly. While policy varies by ISP, most ISPs have itchy trigger fingers and will take action against users who are causing spam problems quite willingly. and keep in mind that if the Terms of Service for your forum prohibits spamming, and the user has been notified that his posting is considered spamming in compliance with your ToS, what this person is doing is, in fact, illegal. If you notify the ISP via their proper abuse notification channel (which, 99% of the time, is emailing abuse@[ispdomain]) they will at minimum forward the abuse notification to the customer's billing account, which is probably going to be this kid's parents. If nothing else, the legal notification that an abuse notice constitutes enough of a threat that he'll probably stop. If he doesn't, continue to contact the ISP. If ISPs recieve enough abuse notices about a user, they'll usually start with a phone call, and then go to terminating the account.

If you're really ticked (or legitimately concerned), and the user has made threats of illegal activity ('hacking'), you can report the user to the FBI internet crime center (or your country's equivalent), which will probably not take action against the user, but does keep logs of complaints (so if you're not the only one having problems with him, the FBI-ICC will know and can take appropriate action, which is typically sending abuse notices to the ISP. Of course, being the FBI, their abuse notices have a fair bit more weight than yours). If the user posts anything constituting p0rnography*, then, for your own protection, immediately report it to the FBI and the office your state Attorney General.

*Yes, this is out of style for me. Turns out my school district blocks requests with a certain word in the POST data.

Not so!
Contrary to popular belief, most ISPs actually aren't douchebags (unless it comes to net neutrality). The link between a random forum's ToS and the laws that have been construed to cover it is really dubious at best--as I recall the last time it was used only because the victim had been driven to suicide. As for the porn rule, that's a different ball game, of course, but ISPs usually don't just drop their customers. It would generate tons of bad publicity anyway--can you imagine the headlines that would hit reddit and digg?

Hell, a significant portion of e-mail spam (which ISPs are far, far more concerned about than frivolous forum posting) comes right out of Verizon, and took them until recently to take action and crack down on those users who have become part of a botnet or are otherwise causing damage.

As a pathological example, almost all of the 4channers that tcp flooded scientology.org last year (with a little help from a few skr1pt k1dd33z) didn't bother to hide their IP, and only one was ever caught (I don't even think his ISP was involved; I think they caught him some other way). Rest assured that if they're not disabling accounts after that, there's no way they'll get all up in arms about some little forum.

It would be far too much work for them to bother with that anyway. Trolls almost always get bored within a week. I'd much rather they spend their time improving the quality of their service - and would you just look what Comcast did!

If everyone would stop being so offended, there wouldn't be so many offenders. See how that works?

You have got the weirdest outlook on everything, dude. Offense really has nothing to do with it - If I've said it prior, I do believe I'll be saying again - Don't act like an asshole, and you won't be treated like an asshole. There are really no two ways about it, in the end. If you're purposefully being a malicious prick, then I see no problem with you being treated as a malicious prick. If everyone would stop being offended, there wouldn't be so many offenders primarily because no one would care if people rape babies. I certainly wouldn't be offended, that's for sure. =D =D =D