Ban free email accounts?

[Shawn]

I can't see myself ever doing that.

 

[Live2Die]

Certain emails, like 10minutemail and mailanator are very useful for trolls and spammers.
I'd suggest banning those.

 

[breakmydreams]

What are your thoughts on banning the free email accounts to prevent people from registering with them?

I'm against it because of the fact that I don't think all spammers are from free e-mail services.

 

[ebob]

Just wondering if anyone knows of an updated list of free email providers. I'm using an old vB list but I think it is quite out of date!

 

[the_dorito_chip]

I think banning free e-mail providers such as Yahoo, GMail, or Hotmail/Live is a horrible idea. First, half if not more of total members on most sites are from those 3 main providers alone. Second, most spam bots don't even use free e-mail addresses, they usually have their own domains and servers.

In the end you block FAR MORE legit users from signing up than spammers. Personally, I've NEVER used an ISP e-mail account in my life. I've always had a Yahoo and Hotmail account since I was 10.

It's like having a house with a mouse in it. Rather than just catching the mouse they just blow up the house instead to get rid of it, yet in the process lose the very thing they were trying to protect in the first place.

This will hurt you more than help no matter how you implement the ban.

 

[Callista]

I've banned free email accounts on my vB forums since 2000/2001 but let existing users prior to the ban implementation to keep their free email addresses

I have virtually no trolls, spammers and in 3yrs have banned less than 80-150 users and most of those bans were done before banning of free email addresses was implemented

After upgrading to vB3 RC2 last week and cleaned out 3,700+ member accounts for inactive email addresses which were bouncing back over 1,500 emails/day to my server! All members deleted had free email accounts from hotmail/yahoo etc and registered prior to my ban implementation.

Now, i have all members old and new updating their email addresses to ensure they're valid.

I now have a list of 31,600+ banned email domains. I moderate new regos since I manually approve each new member by:

First, looking at their profile and email address, if it's a domain i never seen, i go to the web site check it out, see if it's a free domain provider or if it's an ISP or some form of paying only email service.

If it is a paying only email service, educational instituation, work place, web mater's site email, or ISP then i approve the regos. If it's a free domain provider the domain is put into a ban list i keep. I do this for each and every new registration that comes through - i normally get 20-100 new users/day. But if it's an obscure free domain provider and it's the first time this domain has been used on my forum, I may let it through and see how it goes.

I have disabled new registrations on my forum for 11+ months and for past 5 weeks my server was down due to multiple hardware failures, only to get server back online 5 days ago and reopen regos 3 days ago and editing all my rego templates and rego emails to ensure visitors understand which email domains are allowed and why i'm banning free email providers. So far i've had 119 new registered users in past 2 1/2 days a bit less than my rate of new regos 11 months ago prior to disabling regos

Guess it depends on your forum target audience as well. I'd love to allow all free domain providers, but with 1,500+ bounced emails/day excluding 1,800 emails/day of spam - it's impossible give legit users or visitors a chance to even contact me via the forum contact admin email as their emails won't get seen until i clear out the bounced + spam emails.

Now i cleared those members with bounced emails, i can read emails from legit users/visitors to my site in a timely manner!

Wouldn't you lose potential members who may have something good to contribute? I wouldn't do that. A precaution I take against spam is having moderators read the member's first ten posts. If it's not spam, they can post freely. That helps.

 

[AriesWren]

I respect the anonymity of users, but if I find that too many spammers are coming from a single free e-mail, then I blacklist it for a while. Although, you can get in touch with me directly to have an account set up if you're so inclined.

 

[beeurd]

I wouldn't do this it all... I own around 12 domains so I am not short of choice for email addresses, but I still sign up to websites using my gmail account. Never used an email account that came with my ISP. lol

 

[Earache]

I wouldn't ban them.

I swear by gmail being a user of it myself.

I wouldn't want to stay at a site which doesn't allow them.

 

[Ferrari353]

I wouldn't ban free emails, but I would be fine banning disposable emails...

 

[SpectreFire]

It depends, it's been known to work very successfully at times.

Take NeoGAF for example, they ban all private email and requires admin approval first before your account's activated, but the site is nonstop busy and keeps receiving huge amounts of new users. As long as your site's big enough that such a rule won't affect too much, and if you have a good reason to use it, then go for it.

 

[Serenity278]

I would never do that. I find it soo annoying when I go to boards and they do that. Some people don't like to use their paid email account or they don't have one.

 

[Ferrari353]

I actually found a site that does that! I couldn't sign up with my gmail. I had to use my forum email...

 

[Crazylegs999]

My forum grew from one destroyed by trolls and duplicate users hiding behind multiple hotmail and gmail accounts. From day one the new forum has banned throwaway email addresses and the problem has gone away despite having the same core of users as the defunct forum.

 

[Joshuad]

I have several domains that I own, and I STILL use gmail as my primary email. I have a few emails set up on my domains, but guess where they are redirected to. Gmail. Reason being, I could sell a site, disband a site, or go bankrupt and lose all of my sites, and I still have Gmail. I learned after I've lost several things due to registering private emails.

 

[Nudaii]

gmail for me also, rarely use my site emails

 

[EvilGrin]

I just sent out a newsletter to over 700 members and between 40 to 50% were using free emails. I only got 1 bounced back mail. I use a free email myself gmx.com . It would be madness for me to cut free services off. I don't see any benefit in it at all, but of course YMMV.

 

[blahblahblah2]

My thoughts are the majority of the web uses them. So if you're feeling suicidal ... GO FOR IT !!! YAY !

 

[russellw]

We've got a reasonably long list of blocked email domains that are known sources of spam but as we still run all new registrations through the approval queue we haven't needed to be any wider ranging. Interesting to note that about half of our 400 new registrations per day are not legitimate.

I can't see that blocking something like half the potential audience is a very good move.

Cheers
Russ