Blocking fake members

[billd2]

After almost a year of peaceful and enjoyable existence, my Ning site is now being deluged with requests to join, and all of them are obviously fake gmail addresses. I mistakenly let the first one join, and they immediately started posting links to drug and porn sites.  I suspended that person and deleted the contents, and now I have to check every day for other spammers trying to join. Is there anything I can do other than suspend and flag them as spam?  Can I block people like this from even applying to join?  What does Ning do to verify the validity of people wishing to join a Ning network?

[FedMedic]

Hi ya Billd2, as network creators and admins, we must take the bull by the horns on this one and vet our own members. You could start by moderating your members (set your network to approve each member), it really works to slow down or bring the spamming to a halt. Before you approve them, you can Google a "free email Validator" it depends on how in depth you want to go but some of them even gives IP addresses and what ISP they are using, so if they do spam you when you appreove them you can then contact their ISP about the spamming. You can add profile questions that baffle the bots, if of course, they are bots. For instance, I have so many questions for my members to answer, the bots give up and if they are human, I can check them out before approving their membership. I've also had many who withdrew their membership, which tells me they were a spammer or they were not serious about contributing to the network, so honestly I wouldn't want a squatter on my network anyway. It's about the quality of the people and the information we provide not the quantity of members we have. Don't get me wrong, I would love to have 50,000 members on my network, but not if only twenty are actually participating at any given moment.

I'm sure there are many other suggestions the network creators can offer you, I thought I would just offer my two cents. (smile)

Good luck!

Cheers,
FedMedic

[Eric Suesz]

Hi, billd2! I think the best course of action is to have member moderation turned on and be vigilant. There is a large spam attack occurring across the Internet. You can read more about it on our Spam Update page. Hope this helps.

[Marianne Kieffer]

I got the same problem since recently. I have 86 requests for fake memberships that fill my e-mail-account. I thought that maybe ning did this because I did not use my page much and the adds are somehow useless, and they wish me to ask for support and to pay for my page. I would pay something of course, rather than having stupid adds. I thought to contact the responsibles of ning, but got into endless questions and did not yet find the direct contact. Maybe someone else did?