"Best online cigarettes shop" SPAM, in the Hey Ken! section, just above this topic...

There is some discussion of the problem and what can be done about it here:

Ken: Some poor sod is punching in the letters from the picture.

I am deleting around 1 or 2 of these accounts a day. The "real first and last names" filter simplifies detection a bit (though some comply with it, and we currently have one of those whom I suspect is not a real account -crazy email address, unverified, but no weblink, so it stays for now.)

If we could restrict the Members list to being visible only to Members, it might help a bit, but compared to what happens to some, our problem isn't bad.


I'm also periodically adding email sources the the ban list; currently:

cashette.com
spambob.*
bigfreemail.info
gawab.com [just added; it's the declared email of the recent rash of spam accounts]

mail.ru used to be on the list, but I took it back off after a few months and it isn't causing trouble at the moment. If it spraks up, back it goes.

The trouble with places such as mail.ru and gawab.com is that we potentially block out legitimate users as well. Hopefully, they will email Ken to complain; but many will just slip away. Thus my use of bans on legitimate email providers tends to be tactical - discourage the current perp, then take it down.

That said, spambob, bigfreemail, and cashette appear to exist to hide identities and function, to my jaundiced eye, as a means of providing free email services to spammers. They are toast until proven innocent.

I just added this mod to my phpBB message board and it has stopped 15 bogus registrations in the first 36 hours and hasn't let anything bad through yet.

Ken asked me about it on my forum and I gave him this same link.