Block Spammers from Signing up

I get a lot of exposure on my site...the only problem is I have had almost 3000 fraudulent signups but they cannot do anything because of email addresses not being confirmed. The thing that is aggravating the most is that I have to keep going into the admin section to delete them...and the fact that the Spy block does allow their names to be displayed as newly joined members.

I wish there was a way to stop this. Is there a way to recode some protection into dolphin that only allows member names to be displayed on the Spy wall and the site if and only if they verify their email address?

Thanks in advance.

This is a huge issue and by searching the forum you will find solutions that will work for you.

Hello

1. You may take a look at our Access Managemet System module here. It allows you to block visitors by IP, IP range and even the whole country. If your fake users have identical location then the module may help you. If you have some questions feel free to ask.

2. About displaying in Spy Wall you need to contact with the vendor of the "Spy Wall" module. About the other default Dolphin's features. All of them should be modified separately. If you create a list of places critical for you then I think I would be able to help you with the cistom modification. If you are interesting you may contact me via BoonEx Unity internal mailbox.

I try to block spammers as they attempt to register. I found this forum topic: How to restrict email providers on registration helpful... just keep adding domains to the list as you learn about them.  I combine that "trick" with the Access Management (v2) module by AntonLV... lots of nice tools in that package.  And, if spammers do register, I use this tip Member Reject Button / Member Rejection Letter to make rejecting a registration quick & easy.  If you find better solutions please share... thank you.

A lot of these darn bots are direct hits and so you could potentially block blank refer'ers in .htaccess. I doubt it will make a huge difference or impact, but another thing to add to the list of blocking and preventing. It would be rare that someone would go directly to your join form if they were not a bot, not totally unlikely, but extremely rare, so the point is to block direct access to join from a blank referer. I do some of that with other scripts.

What I've done for the interim at my site is to lock out certain e-mails and have opted to verify by invite and verify via donation. Additionally, I also tuned the posting rules.

Both have significantly reduced the spammers to about 0 as of today.

It is difficult to balance between giving enough access to your site for real and potential members and blocking out bots and spammers. For, my current process works and will most likely modify it in the next couple of weeks to try out another system.

I am on a dedicated server at my facility and I see spam hit it daily...most of the sites on my servers are protected and do not get hit. The dolphin site I have gets hit a lot. 

@AntonLV...the Spy module is part of Boonex Dolphin. 

I will research the idea about blocking hits as GameUtopia suggested.

Update for anyone wanting to know something to try...add this to the root of your domain to the .htaccess file

# referrer must not be blank
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !^$
 # List OK urls
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !yourdomain.com [nocase]
 # Send them to home page
RewriteRule .* / [last]

haha.. looks like a spammer came to see what attempts are being made to thwart their access.

The Two step join process has eliminated all Spammer signups on my site. My finger was beginning to get sore from all the member deletions I was doing on a daily basis.

Good news is...since I posted the code I am using on my site now...in 2 days...normally I would have had well over 100 new spammers signed up...I just checked and there were only 5.

Huge difference. Thanks for all the suggestions.