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Hello,
I have been receiving emails regarding online dating scams on my site. I tried to use anti-scam on CP to disable access for some countries from CP and block IP, but I was not very successful. Members from IPs of 41 or 196 still register using Proxy or registered in another country.
I also have a long list of DENY IP from .htaccess file.
What is the best way to stop online dating scams?
Thanks.
Just enable credits to send messages, Scammers will never pay.
The only effective way is to closely monitor who is signing up and what they do - including checking IP numbers against the city/country they claim to be in. I've had these scammers attempting to sign up recently but they never get approved. I keep a very tight watch and either refuse or delete any profile that looks suspicious. This year, only one spammer made it, and he was gone within hours. My members like the fact that they are highly unlilkely to get spammers or scammers contacting them. Running a dating site requires constant vigilance.
I totally agree. You have to work your site day after day to make it a clean and safe environment for your members especially if they are PAYING members.
Do you guys allow auto-verification by email?
I'm tempted to manually verify newcomers (about 1 to 5 people per day).
In 24h, two scammers attacked my site a couple days ago...
Both posting a blatant "super sexy blond" picture.
One was from Cote d'Ivoire, using a proxy.
The other i don't know.
I annihilated them rapidly.
One was quick enough to send 11 private messages!
I destroyed those messages.
I approve every sign up manually and do my checks before approving them - but it does put some people off. If its an obvious scammer, I don't even send a refusal email, I just delete them.
I'm going now in the offensive and starting a new site, www.Scammer-Dot.com
I put all my scammer now there.
I hope thats will help to protect my members. If anyone has interest to participate, send me a mail on scammer-dot.com
To me it sounds like a silly idea - to post photos some scammer used.
Google has indexed billions of pics and absolutely any of it can be used by a scammer.
It doesn't make sense trying to remember all those pics.
That's right radioact! But google indexed their user name and emails, and thats is it.
Don't know will helps or not, but I try it.
doesen't really give sense, stopforumspam is the way to go, can also be used with vld.
Actually once you have 100+ members joined every day is very time consuming to manually approve each one. Besides when user registrates he ussualy wants to have instant access to services. The best thing it worked for us on some other system is creating new members page for admin. On this page you have in one line username, precise time and date of registration, IP number and the country/provider to which IP belongs to. In the background there is a script running that automatically checks for user ip country and provider. If you have local dating site or you are oriented on a few countries its quite easy then to see which users are scammers and which not. You have then a few buttons to delete/ block user, block only IP... We plan to do something similar for VLD during summer upgrade.
Actually once you have 100+ members joined every day is very time consuming to manually approve each one. Besides when user registrates he ussualy wants to have instant access to services. The best thing it worked for us on some other system is creating new members page for admin. On this page you have in one line username, precise time and date of registration, IP number and the country/provider to which IP belongs to. In the background there is a script running that automatically checks for user ip country and provider. If you have local dating site or you are oriented on a few countries its quite easy then to see which users are scammers and which not. You have then a few buttons to delete/ block user, block only IP... We plan to do something similar for VLD during summer upgrade.
I agree ...
" We plan to do something similar for VLD during summer upgrade." You mean a mod?
" We plan to do something similar for VLD during summer upgrade." You mean a mod?
Yes. New page in admin section. Its not a lot of work and can post solution here or pack it in a module. The only thing im not shure now is if it is worth waiting for 3.0 before we start making mods.
I saw a script on another dating site .. who have solved this way:
If one writes 4 times the same message (with copy & paste), then displays a message that is counted as spam and his account will be blocked immediately.
Could someone help as to create a script?
Last edited by nice2behere (2012-05-17 17:41:00)
I think this will not work the Scammer will blocked with their ip so he can come back using a proxy and change their ip.
Then he know the trick, he will send a message and copy and paste it and change one character and send again.
He will do this all the time.
I think the best way is to enable credits because Scammers will never pay.
Your sites will be clean.
I saw it on www.dateinasia.com, ...yes you are right but he can send then only 3 or 4 messages and not 100 or more messages in 10 minutes.
Before..., I have deactivate the copy and paste function in the messages templates but that's not work with all browsers and was not user friendly, ..because some users copy and paste their messages for the translater.
Last edited by nice2behere (2012-05-17 22:13:56)