Having trouble banning this person...

Recently I've noticed an influx in members on my site, and they all seemed to be made on the same day, strange eh me thinks a spammer... Then I started noticing random posts full of spam links with clever titles whom you would think is not spam but it is in my forum.

I've constantly been deleting these spam threads and banning the user however they keep coming back with a new account, with new email address and a new ip. Because theyre hiding their true ip with some proxy I cant track the real culprit and ban him for good.

Does anyone have any ideas on solving this problem? Any special software that can uncover a hidden ip? The longer I wait, the more he spams and the more random accounts he makes.

Any help would be greatly appreciated, I wonder what daft uses to prevent these things from happening on these forums Oo

Dont know if it matters but my forums run by vBulletin.

Also I'm estimating the guy made about 50 accounts so far in this month, but I cant tell if some are legit or made by him. Is there a way to find some connection in all these accounts so I can delete them all?

Usually ISPs will give out similar IPs to their users but not necessarily the same ones if you can make a list of the IPs he is using there may be a pattern and you could then block most of his IPs at once. Other than that if he is using truly random IPs I don't think you can really do much about it. Maybe making the potential users go through a longer more complex form like on most forums with email activation would slow them down.

QUOTE (langes01x @ Feb 03 2009, 10:00 PM) Usually ISPs will give out similar IPs to their users but not necessarily the same ones if you can make a list of the IPs he is using there may be a pattern and you could then block most of his IPs at once. Other than that if he is using truly random IPs I don't think you can really do much about it. Maybe making the potential users go through a longer more complex form like on most forums with email activation would slow them down.
Yea we got the email activation + a image verfication thing. I am making note on the ip's though they seem pretty different. So far the best thing I can do is ignore him and delete his threads asap to make it seem like a macro is doin it automatically or something. Also how does a person make so many accounts so quickly in a day. He cant be using a macro cause of the image verification. Wonder how they pull it off.

My friend told me he knows how to deal with these people which got me curious as to how its done. So are you sure theres no trick or special software to detect spamming pirates like this guy?

The answer is its a bot lol.... if you can find pattern in these post you could ban these type of post to prevent a post being made in the first place like ftv do i believe.

QUOTE (Kansatsusha-sama @ Feb 03 2009, 10:13 PM) The answer is its a bot lol.... if you can find pattern in these post you could ban these type of post to prevent a post being made in the first place like ftv do i believe.
Yea, so I'd have to mess around with the code for the forum or something and how would I be able to modify and program certain protocals in a forum preventing stuff like this.

You could also make a note of the emails he is using and lock them out of the activation. Especially ones where you can just go to and use it for a day or whatever. That would probably require a bit of coding maybe a plug-in or something would work if vbulletin supports them.

How about trying this?
http://www.vbulletin.org/forum/showthread.php?t=118421

For your registration form have some stupid questions such as are you human. Which planet do you live on.

They stop bots as the bot doesnt respond to them.