Why does vbulletin atract spam?
 

ive used many different forum softwares over the years

phpbb, mybb, smf etc etc

Ive only had people registering that actually are there for a reason!

Ive noticed that for some reason vbulletin attracts alot of spammers

Why is that?

over the years, there was less spam, it's a new tengeant... real commercial spam is on the net for months, not years, so it's sure you did not see it anywhere else in the past.

and vBulletin is not different from IPB or phpBB... go to their support forums and see, you will read a lot of new requests for more anti-spam support.

thats not answered my question

if it does not answer your question, make your question clearer, because all the facts are there...

dmknights, I agree. In my honest opinion, vbulletin could be doing alot more to prevent or discourage spammers, yet instead of improving the features that already exist, the focus always seems to be on cramming more stuff in.

Just off the top of my head:

1) Built in support tp prevent signatures or links until a new user has made an admin defined number of posts. Also a way to limit the number of posts a new user can make per day so admins can easily identify the problem members and deal with them.

2) Multiple steps to human verification instead of just one. Captcha + question. An admin defined # of questions to ask. A way for admins to enter several questions and answers.

These are 2 small changes that would go a long way in preventing spammers. If vbulletin can implement blogs and a CMS, this seems trivial. Members shouldn't have to download plugins/products to prevent spam.

activate email verification cut the spam from 95%... people don't use it because they hate to bother their members... sorry, but if you do not do the effort, you have spam anyway.

We have a custom question set up that they must answer...

Ever since then we haven't gotten one spam bot....

And block e-mail addresses like .ru and other popular spam bot e-mail addresses.

Ive posted this 10 times on this forum... people like spam I guess...

I just thnk vbulletin should ship with multiple lines of defense. As it is right now, you can choose 1 form of spam prevention. I want to make it harder for spammers to get in, and harder for them to spam if they do.

New members should have to both answer a question and enter the captcha image text. After that, they should not be allowed to post links to other sites until they have x number of posts. They should also be limited to x number of posts per day until they reach a certain number. By the time a member reaches the post count where they can post links, you will have a pretty good idea if they are legit or not.

Well to each his own...

My site requires both a captcha image and a question (IIRC...it's been so long since I've messed with it) and it does a well enough job. As for not being able to post links, that depends on what your forums are geared towards.