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A couple of times a month, I'll have a new user respond to an old topic with a random "thanks" or "me too" style message in a topic where that type of reply doesn't necessarily fit. These topics may be months or years old. Something just seems... off.

They'll often have seemingly random gmail or yahoo addresses and a non-sense username.



Instead of just banning the account, I'd like to be able to flag these accounts in some way for continued monitoring. Is there a way to force a specific user's posts through the moderator approval system?



My other thought is to set up a custom role and deny their ability to create new topics, but that's a lot of clicks going through all of the categories to manage that. It also doesn't seem very user-friendly if I'm wrong.



What's everyone's thoughts on this type of user behavior? How do you manage it?



Thanks

-Drew
Hey @Drew C.

I personally don't think you've got a spammer on your hand, I think you've got a forum novice; Someone that actually used your community for its purpose, and have enough decency to show their appreciation 😃



If we have a user with 'suspicious' behavior, we check their user profile, including IP, and if something seems to be slightly off - For instance they state in their profil that they're from The Netherlands, but their IP is in India, we ban them (yep, just like that). They can always get in contact with us to have it reverted, if they're a 'real' user. That haven't actually happened yet, though.

If everything seems dandy, we leave them be.



Best,

Ditte
Thanks Ditte.

The reason I suspect their intent is to spam is because the behavior I typically see is that they'll quote a question and "thank" the person for their help, or make a semi-relevant comment. They'll usually come back later to post whatever links they're going to spam with.



The email addresses are also mostly random, on free email domains. Things like this:


  • st19k1dd1n6
  • bl9tpizdec
  • gsagsa6423

One of these users, for example, has a registration address that shows Amazon as the ISP in Washington State, but the IP used for posting is in the UK. Another registered with a German IP but posted from the UK. It's just... suspicious.



Is there any way to more closely monitor these users or should I post an Idea for this?



Cheers,

-Drew
Thanks Ditte.

The reason I suspect their intent is to spam is because the behavior I typically see is that they'll quote a question and "thank" the person for their help, or make a semi-relevant comment. They'll usually come back later to post whatever links they're going to spam with.



The email addresses are also mostly random, on free email domains. Things like this:

  • st19k1dd1n6
  • bl9tpizdec
  • gsagsa6423
One of these users, for example, has a registration address that shows Amazon as the ISP in Washington State, but the IP used for posting is in the UK. Another registered with a German IP but posted from the UK. It's just... suspicious.



Is there any way to more closely monitor these users or should I post an Idea for this?



Cheers,

-Drew



Hi @Drew C. ,



With those email addresses, I'd also treat them as potential spammers and just outright ban them.

I don't think there's much in the way of monitoring outside of the already decently working Akismet filter, unless you want to keep a hawk-eye on the user overview, or pre-mod all new users.



Cheers,

Ditte

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