users with period in name flagged as spam

Users are being blocked when they try to login but not when they register.
some user have a period in their email like iamjl.warner@gmail.com and others don't.
most blocks seem to be caused by simple common name like
jerry & marco
This is on joomla 3.4 if that makes any difference. Doing a manual search on spamforum.com does NOT return any hits even thought he email says 127,128,129 ( i got 3 notices )

Hi,

sorry for the inconvenience and thank you for this information!
I'm going to trying to reproduce this behavior right away with current SpambotCheck 1.3.13 on Joomla! 3.4.0 as you stated.
Could you please tell me meanwhile what SpambotCheck version you are running?

Regards, Ingmar

Hi,

it was not possible to reproduce the behavior that you encountered.

This is what I tried with the current SpambotCheck Version 1.3.13 on Joomla! 3.4.0 based on your problem description and information:

1) used settings: event = login and registration; check = e-mail and IP; both white-list and blacklist = empty; providers = all
- performed action: multiple registration and subsequent login with e-mail having dots in its name
- result was: success
2) used settings: events = login and registration; check = e-mail and IP AND user name; both white-list and black-list = empty; providers = all
- performed action: registration and subsequent login with user name 'jerry & marco'
- result was: success
- performed action: registration and subsequent login with user name 'iamjl.warner' and e-mail 'iamjl.warner@gmail.com'
- result was: success

So as for me everything worked out well as expected.

You can easily see what exactly caused the blocking by inspecting the log.
Logging is off by default. Go to the plugin configuration and set parameter 'Log Spambot to DB' = yes in order to get spam attack information logged into the database.
If logging was off before, you have to wait until the next spam event happens, to see any log entry.
Open to the component Spambotcheck (Joomla! main menu Components) and select 'Logs' on the left side in the sidebar (default view is 'Users').
The columns 'Request' and 'Raw Return' or 'Parsed Return' will show you what exactly caused the block and the column 'Action' tells you at what user action it happened (register or login).

The same SpambotCheck code parts run during registration and login spam test. There's no difference in the workflow other than the Joomla! framework event that was fired.
We have to consider that the IP might change between registration and login or subsequent logins of the same user.
This might explain the different behavior between registration and later logins.

The e-mail is treated as one simple string in SpambotCheck.
As long as it is in a valid format (otherwise Jooma! itself won't let you pass) it does not matter what characters are part of the e-mail address.
String comparison is part of the process if you're using the e-mail black-list. But it works the same for both registration and login.

Some providers do offer to check the user name. However, we recommend to not use the login user name as a value to check.

I hope this could help you somehow!
I personally would inspect the logging first to see what is actually going on.

What could you find out?

Regards, Ingmar