Spammers

[billbee22]

How can I keep spammers out of my forums? It is a lot of work deleting 10 or 20 spam threads a day.

Bill

[Cyberbite]

Are you allowing anonymous posting? That's the first thing to turn off. Second, require a valid email address and require verification before their account is active.

[Autumn]

There are many ways

First, what software do you use?

[Lpspider]

Also require some type of Q&A or image verification at registration.

[Autumn]

Also require some type of Q&A or image verification at registration.

With vBulletin, the Q&A need to be changed every few weeks because they soon get around that :sundecided:

[SlightlyShadySEO]

Are you allowing anonymous posting? That's the first thing to turn off. Second, require a valid email address and require verification before their account is active.

The most popular link spam tool has the ability to pull out verification links, and check pop e-mail accounts. Disabling free pop accounts(gmail, gawab.de, web.de, anything ending in .ru) can eliminate SOME of them.

Also require some type of Q&A or image verification at registration.

Kills the home rolled software, but not so much for XRumer. Unless you use a custom, not so basic question. That will beat it, although it has the ability to autolearn, and handle things like "repeat the word cheese", and do the action.


Switch out the different form names, or make it so that javascript must be enabled to do it(use document.writeln), and perhaps with a basic encode() decode() function in javascript. That will dodge the most popular tools

Also, delete "Powered By PHPBB2" from the bottom of your page, and if you can, change viewtopic.php to a different name.
If that's what you want to do, I have a post on removing footprints(change hxxp to http, I'm changing it because I dont know how this forum feels about live links yet)
http://www.slightlyshadyseo.com/?p=133
The article is written for blogs, but works for forums as well. Good for preventing them from finding you in the first place.

..heh. There is apparently a use for a BH in this forum...

[grim]

I enabled your link Slightlyshadyseo. If you want me to disable it let me know, figured maybe you didn't at the risk of being accused of spam? A good link to a source for a good reason is fine by me

[SlightlyShadySEO]

I enabled your link Slightlyshadyseo. If you want me to disable it let me know, figured maybe you didn't at the risk of being accused of spam? A good link to a source for a good reason is fine by me

Alight, thanks! And yeah, I didn't want to run into that issue. I write a lot on there, and find myself citing it a lot, and wanted to make sure it's ok.


Oh yeah, I forgot one other tip that's lovely. The main link spam tool out there has a setting tu automagically give posting preference to any folder with one of a few keywords in it(so it will post there, and not anywhere else)

flood
flame
stuff
blah
off-topic
off topic
offtopic
oftopic
general
common
business
adver

Making a category with one of those words will absorb a fair piece of your spam.

[Colleen]

Alight, thanks! And yeah, I didn't want to run into that issue. I write a lot on there, and find myself citing it a lot, and wanted to make sure it's ok.


Oh yeah, I forgot one other tip that's lovely. The main link spam tool out there has a setting tu automagically give posting preference to any folder with one of a few keywords in it(so it will post there, and not anywhere else)

flood
flame
stuff
blah
off-topic
off topic
offtopic
oftopic
general
common
business
adver

Making a category with one of those words will absorb a fair piece of your spam.

I noticed many love to also post their spam in the "work from home" forum as well.

[SlightlyShadySEO]

I noticed many love to also post their spam in the "work from home" forum as well.

Heh that might be a custom rig someone did. all those categories to give preference to are editable in the config. Or it could be home-rolled software. Either way, that's a really popular niche, so there will always be a lot.

[billbee22]

Thanks for the info. I had a look at the article great stuff. I had a forum on a business site that got so overloaded with porn spam I just shut it down. Could not keep up with it. Now I have more ammo and know what to do. Thanks everyone for your post.

Bill

[DarrenC]

I popped by a competitors forum this week.

It had images of porn stars, not exactly the type of image you want for a family friendly forum.

If you can't control the spam set the forum up so you have to authorise the signups before they can post. It's not ideal, but you have to protection your reputation.

[superrichguy]

Do the Q&A and change it up every week. I have the one on my pbpbb board that you can write down like 20 and it will rotate them all. I get tons of reports in my email telling me who was blocked. It cut down my spam to almost 0. Now I get the ocassional one post spam.
Get some mods to help take care of that stuff. Recruit the popular posters to help out. Then you wont have to delete as many.
Spam isnt going away, you just need to adapt.

[noppid]

I still have not seen captcha beaten with ture type fonts enabled. Of course, ttf has to be enabled in apache for this to work. vBulletin tells you this, but it does not indicate if it is working or not. So, even if you add ttf fonts, it may be default captcha.

With the right fonts and settings, we find the images readable as well as secure.

[Stax]

I still have not seen captcha beaten with ture type fonts enabled. Of course, ttf has to be enabled in apache for this to work. vBulletin tells you this, but it does not indicate if it is working or not. So, even if you add ttf fonts, it may be default captcha.

With the right fonts and settings, we find the images readable as well as secure.

best form of captcha though (for vb) is the mod that allows you to specify as many questions/answers you want to display...

instead of an image with $DFHE%@ in it...

What color is grass? Green, green
What is 2 + 2? Four, 4, four
etc..works wonders

or my other mandatory vb mod is the 'isbot' detection tool...if i make a forum, i set it to 15 seconds...if any registration takes less than 15 seconds...it is cancelled immediately.

[noppid]

It's not better, it's different. I can't agree with it being "better". It's an alternative. But worse, it requires hand management and if left unchanged too long, is beatable.

If you can't use TTF, then this is the next best thing though.

I tend to try and use tools that make my scheduled tasks and to do list shorter, not longer. You know, work smarter, not harder? But that's me.

[Stax]

But worse, it requires hand management and if left unchanged too long, is beatable.

I made it more difficult because I add a new question/phrase at least twice a week...so in a few months it starts getting a huge selection of randomness to it...to an extent...

though the main reason i use it is because it seems 'funner' than a captcha image...i've seen people complain on forums that the captcha is too hard, etc...but never once seen a complaint about the questioning system...

i'd rather deal with the 1% of spam that might beat it...than worry about complaints from members

[noppid]

That is a very valid point. I can appreciate that.

However, even though it took a while, we chose fonts and randomness that is readable. Some of the fonts or effects render the images unreadable.

Like I said, it's just me. I'm lazy and don't like to revisit issues. But I reserve the right to change my mind too.

[BatM]

Alight, thanks! And yeah, I didn't want to run into that issue. I write a lot on there, and find myself citing it a lot, and wanted to make sure it's ok.


Oh yeah, I forgot one other tip that's lovely. The main link spam tool out there has a setting tu automagically give posting preference to any folder with one of a few keywords in it(so it will post there, and not anywhere else)

flood
flame
stuff
blah
off-topic
off topic
offtopic
oftopic
general
common
business
adver

Making a category with one of those words will absorb a fair piece of your spam.

I like this idea very much.. I may include this into a "Dummy" forum and have every one of those as threads and topics

Thanks SlightlyShadySEO

[SlightlyShadySEO]

I like this idea very much.. I may include this into a "Dummy" forum and have every one of those as threads and topics

Thanks SlightlyShadySEO

Ah, you want those as topics. Just one or two on the main page :-)
Threads won't work.
and you're welcome

[BatM]

Beauty. So one or two topics named off topic and adver and hopefully get less spam Genius!

[grim]

I keep getting hit with the same/similar porn spam 1-2 times a day!

[SlightlyShadySEO]

I keep getting hit with the same/similar porn spam 1-2 times a day!

I'm not sure if you're a coder, but if you are, try IP based blacklisting based on domain(resolve linked domains, ban if if it's the same IP)
If it's parasiting, you're kind screwed

[grim]

VB upgrade has helped