Question

I am after a username and email spam list. When a user tries to register I want to check if the username or email they entered is on the username/email spam list and if so mark the account as suspected spam and manually verify membership.

The backend behind it is not my problem, I am just wondering if anyone knows of such spam list(s) that I can import into a MySQL database so I can implement it into my signup script?

I know there is Askimet but believe this is more towards a comments form for example, plus I don’t particularly want to send data to a third party to verify if something is potentially spam.

Answer 1

Your problem is not spam accounts. Spam email accounts which are used to send out spam are unlikely to be used to sign up for a service.

What you want to use is a Captcha service (such as reCAPTCHA – http://www.google.com/recaptcha/captcha) which will help reduce the chance a bot is attempting to sign up for your site. This is not fool proof, there are many alternative methods (such as hidden ID fields and custom headers) – but it is a start.

Then you want to use an email verification sign up system – which requires the user to actually check their email and click on a verification link, to confirm the email address is real. Otherwise you’ll just have people sign up with “[e-mail]” and your system wont actually know they are fake…