Spam in the forums

[Azhria]

Yeah I keep meaning to fix it... will go look now.

---------- Post added at 07:36 PM ---------- Previous post was at 07:31 PM ----------

Should work now.. someone report this post to test it

[hank00001]

The spamm is becoming a big problem for this forum and IMO will be the death of this forum if it is not stopped or at least controlled. These people need to be banned along with their ip's.

I know I havent been here much since the IABT forum moved across but the spamm is going to help. People dont like it and it spoils the forum. If new people come for a look and see spamm flooding the forum they wont join and the forum will not thrive.

Spammers need to be dealt with swiftly and permanently.

My two cents.

[Azhria]

The spam has been awful. I'm looking into ways of blocking their registrations. They've getting cleverer and cleverer.. bastards!

[Cipher]

Lisa, what are you running on here?

[Azhria]

Do you want to be a little more descriptive on what you want me to tell you? LOLI'm running all sorts of things.

[Cipher]

Sorry, dear, I meant to ask "What are you running on here in terms of spam prevention?"

I had to logout and look, but I see you're using a random question modification to prevent would be spammers from registering. Personally, I would look into enabling ReCAPTCHA if you haven't already. Setting up some filter sets for commonly used words for spam threads. Which will cause the threads to go into moderation.

I would also recommend setting it up so that new users with less than X amount of posts cannot post a new thread with links in it or not be able to post a new thread with less than X amount of posts, so they can only reply. Have it based on a promotion system, you'll get less bots and spammers posting, they'll attempt, but their attempts will be futile. You can then go in a few months down the road and prune the would-be spammers. You'll also want to disable PM sending (but not receiving) until they hit an X amount of posts. With that, I would recommend disabling email usage as well. They look for any possible way to piss off people. Of course, you'll want to install the auto-PM modification from vB.org to PM users and let them know what's going on. Legitimate users would find it fine, it isn't a big deal.

Of course, you could also block registration from IP blocks that show up frequently from spammers.


I remember someone (not sure if it was you) who couldn't enable ReCAPTCHA because of problems that occurred. If it was you, then you could always go the double question route.



Edit: I just tried visiting a banned user's profile, and I found the warning message very funny.

[Azhria]

I was using reCAPTCHA and the spammers were still registering. They're not bots so they're capable of reading.

[Cipher]

Then follow up with the other things I said. Why can't a virus just wipe out all spammers.

[Kitty]

Also, I don't know what kind of email addresses these spammers are using when they register, but you should be able to set it to disallow registrations using known spammer email domains and usernames. Seems like there's a thread over at TAZ that lists a lot of those.

[Cipher]

I think I remember seeing that thread, but those come and go.

http://www.vbulletin.org/forum/showthread.php?t=176481

Lee, try that modification. It runs on the same database that provides the spam info for IP.Board when they implemented the feature into the software a few months ago.