How do you deal with spam registrations?

I've got recaptcha, but still spammers keep signing up..maybe by using Postman or something.

After signing up, they update their profile and picture to look real, and create a backlink to some crappy website. It wouldn't be a big problem, but each user is added to my sitemap, and when I delete them, it can cause 500 errors for search engines.

Really annoying! Anyone have this issue?

double opt-in via email + I block all disposable emails.

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Graeme Author

@kilian cheers! how do you identify disposable emails?

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@gray First I check with https://www.npmjs.com/package/disposable-email-domains and if that doesn't catch it I also check with https://www.block-disposable-email.com/

I wrote more about how/why here: https://www.indiehackers.com/post/dont-allow-people-with-these-email-domains-to-sign-up-for-your-saas-21b3637de0

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Graeme Author

@kilian cheers, will give these a go!

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Perhaps my method is not sustainable in the long term, but right now I don't have any links to the real app URL. I just share the link to people I'm on-boarding.

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Uchenna Okafor

Send me a link to your website, I want to see how spammer get in. Also, fighting spam is a game of cat and mouse. You need to really take time to implement measures to deter spammers, and usually this results in just more moderation work.

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Graeme Author

@_UchennaOkafor thanks, the site is https://prototypr.io

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James Kenny

Could you delay the adding of the user to the sitemap?

Do the double opt-in for them to confirm their profile first before you let them add anything as @kilian pointed out.

Could you use a time delay or something else to prevent the back link.

So they can't add a backlink unless their profile is confirmed and X hours pass or they complete something else in app.

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@jamesmkenny yeah so the other things I do is:

  • I have two different honeypots: one hidden with CSS, one hidden with JS. One of those needs to be empty, one of those needs a specific predetermined value.
  • I use rate-limiting where each IP can only register a fixed number of times per hour, and after x registrations, registering takes significantly longer.
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Graeme Author

@jamesmkenny @killian thanks for all these suggestions.

Could you use a time delay or something else to prevent the back link.

Sounds like a plan! Hate these bots, and the people creating them..waste all our time

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Graeme Author

I found my site in this page of do-follow profile creation sites

99techpost.com/top-high-da-do-follow-profile-creation-sites-list-white-hat-links

So I think a lot of them were real people actually signing up to build SEO..made the site no-follow now

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