Bitcoin Forum

I know IP bans don't help against proxies, and may result in banning users who've done no harm, but I was wondering if they're used here at all?

We've got a particularly industrious troll, NotLambChop, creating several alts a day to spam repetitive junk in the speculation forum. Their latest post claims they create new accounts in 15 seconds. This suggests they're not using TOR or any widely used  proxies, since those seem to require quite a bit of effort (and a bit of payment) to use here.

So is it just that IP bans aren't used? Or does this spammer have access to a pool of "clean" IPs?

Ip bans are used but a determined troll will easily bypass them (which nlc is). Every time one of his accounts gets nuked it gets ipbanned I believe but obviously doesn't stop him.

Edit: thread about it here with a response from BadBear: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1149702.msg12108820#msg12108820

Right, so it seems it's a new, clean IP every time.

I'm curious - how would one accomplish that? Are there ways for any old dweeb to access tons of IPs, aside from the usual public proxies and VPNs or tor? The solutions I can come up with all seem a bit hardcore for just trolling a forum.

is it not possible to ban via the mac adresse ?

I think there's enough proxies and TOR exit nodes for him to create a new account each time. When someone is IP banned, the IP doesn't just get blacklisted as that would be a nightmare for legitimate users using VPNs, proxies and TOR. It instead gets a certain number of "units of evil". The bigger the number, the bigger the fee you have to pay to create an account with that IP. If I'm not mistaken, after a certain number of IP bans over a short period of time, the IP gets blacklisted for a while until it "cools down" and becomes available for usage again (with all the "units of evil" I think).

When I registered this account on April last year, I got to pay a fee of 0.0005 iirc because my IP is "restricted" in registering from this forum. At first I thought it was mandatory for the maintenance of the forum, but when I registered another user on a different IP, I don't have to pay for anything. It seems that my previous IP already contains some "units of evil" as to what you have just said here.

that's not how it works.

I tested account creation over tor a while ago, for me at least the exit nodes I ended up going through seemed to have all been flagged by the forum already. Same for the most obvious proxies, which makes sense. Does anyone have experience here - is it simply a matter of trying a little harder or would someone creating multiple accounts day in, day out, from different IPs need to be have better resources than tor and googled lists of proxies?

Known proxies and TOR exit nodes are assigned a fixed amount of units of evil to begin with by default.

To rephrase my question: Am I right to assume anyone not willing to put a lot of effort into digging up publically available proxies or blindly switching tor circuits would end up having to jump through the evil fees hoops in order to farm up spam accounts as NLC is doing?

Edit: Or is it possible to create multiple accounts from a single, proxied IP, and then connect to them via a non-clean but unbanned IP?

For most people using residential ISPs all over the world it is trivial to get a new IP:

1) if the ISP uses DHCP: first use "RELEASE" then "RENEW" while not having any reservation;

2) if the ISP uses PPPo{A,E}: just disconnect the PPP session and reconnect anew.

What are the residential ISPs that make it difficult to change the IPs? I have yet to see any, aside from the ones that don't even assign globally routable IPs but force the use of CG-NAT.

Depends on ISP really.  I have a smaller ISP company not one of the big guys.  It's possible to get new IP but the actually have it wired with a special battery backup.  And if you do open up and unplug from battery backup, you have to wait a bit to try to get new IP so kinda a pain.

But yes others and especially others using services as VPN's, Proxy's, etc IP is hard to stop them from coming back.

Before you guys waste any more time on this, you need to realize that there's a ~95% chance that the things proposed in this thread are exactly what they want. You're being manipulated. They want us to reinstate newbie jail, they want us to crack down on multiple accounts (and account sales), they want us to be more heavy handed in moderation, etc.

Some people think the best way to get rules or policies changed is to abuse them, hoping we'll change our minds.

It's not going to happen.

So NLC is actually campaigning for stricter forum moderation? I'm not sure I buy that. (I don't care about any of the other trolls, just trying to figure out what's going on with this single one.)

Nlc seems to be doing what he's doing in protest at moderation. From what he said recently he wants his main account unbanned and then he'll stop and people can just ignore him if they don't like what he says. Blackmail isn't going to work though but he obviously wants to give it a good go and hope we just relent and give him what he wants.

Has it explicitly stated that?

If that is the case then why put up with an avalanche of shit when it can be imprisoned in its original account? Not that I believe it'll stop doing that.

Yes, hence 'from what he said recently'. And what you're suggesting is a terrible idea. You think giving in to blackmail is something we should do? What's going to happen if we unbanned his account? Other people who are banned will then start spamming the forum multiple times expecting the same result. He'll get board eventually and it's more hassle to him to keep making accounts than it is for the seconds it takes staff to nuke them.

I know it's a terrible idea. Shame there's no such thing as shadow banning on here.

As funny as that might be it wouldn't really work either. People would soon work out what was going on when they're getting 0% rises or responses from people especially since they likely have alts and will easily be able to see that they're shadowbanned.

Yes.

You'd still have to pay the fee if that proxy is known.

What exactly was he banned for? I don't remember any instances of him making a bunch of shit posts, nor of him causing any real kind of trouble, although it is possible that he would frequent different sections then that I frequent.

So you are NotLambChop?

I'm guessing it had to do with how NLC is a textbook troll, pretty much solely posting to get a rise out of people. I guess by the time he moved on to calling people pedophiles etc. even the moderators' patience wore too thin. I'm not sure he was actually banned before the spam epidemic started, it was my impression he caught on to being ignored by so many people and started farming alts. Maybe someone who kept better track of things can comment on that.

It's not a big deal, it's literally a single button press to ban and delete all the posts. Doesn't really register as an actual concern. Grow some thicker skin would be my advice.

Hmmm, well I guess the reason I have never had any issue with him is because I don't frequent the subs that he seems to frequent.

Despite my interest in economics, I tend to avoid the economics (and speculation) sub because it is my understanding that they have a lot of trolls and spammy shit posts (maybe this is actually NLC - ironically).