Geeks for your information

Just a little heads up,

I just looked that the docs on MyBB's forum and someone pointed out that you can block entire domains from signing up.

So if all those spammers are using mail.ru, you could block mail.ru for some time and that would stop spammers from signing up.

Admin CP -> Configuration -> Banning -> Disallowed Email Addresses

then type *@mail.ru or whatever domain it happens to be.

You wouldn't do it for hotmail or gmail, but works great for those Russians mailboxes.

Source: https://community.mybb.com/thread-88897.html

I understand Daniel's reasoning but I don't agree with the blocking of an entire domain ----> you can't block all members of domains like @mail.ru etc - some could be legitimate potential members.

It's a good suggestion, but might frustrate genuine members.

Valid point.

What about making the first post needing to be approved?

Actually we have one such mail domain (projectgold.ru) blocked. We did that a few days after starting the forums.

I appreciate the suggestions Daniel, and in fact I do want to block some mail servers. Unfortunately, that mail server happens to be one of the most popular ones in Russia (and possibly its neighbours).

But as Grr and Dino rightly say, we may have legitimate members who wish to sign up using these mail domains, so we may have to just stick to banning spammers manually.