Spammers!
 

How many spam bots register on your vBulletin 4 site on an average day? If you have third-party anti-spam plugins, how many got in daily before installing them, and after? We're doing research on vBulletin spam and if you'll share that would be great.

Thank you :)

I had a few a month who slipped through other modifications before installing Spammers Suck!

Now I have Zero.

I had 40 or 50 a day until I installed Spammers Suck, now I don't seem to be getting any at all, just the occasional "human" ones that get through.

I get quite a bit of attempted registrations daily. But simple Q/A verification and Spam-O-Matic work wonders. Only 2-3 a month do I actually need to ban and clean up posts.

I get about 150 a day banned on conditions of stopforumspam.
I get perhaps 20 a day trip up on other methods i use.
Those 2 alone and the heavy moderation we place on new users = 0 spam!
I get perhaps 2 or 3 bots get through and register but with the limits in place they dont post.
And if they did they are non visible posts so cant be scraped anyway.
Currently its me 1 and spammers 0.
How long that will last lolz. Who knows but it gives me a bit of fun to try beat them.

Never had spam as I'm using the Questions/Answers as human verification. I've around 50 questions like: "Starting from Monday which is the 4+1 day (Monday, Tuesday, Friday, Sunday)".

Happy New Year to all
Chris

I had about 100 registrations per day until I added an 'are you a spambot' question to the registration form. This cut it down to about 10. From there I've banned a lot of isp's (esp chineese ones) and the spam seems to be down to a more manageable trickle.

To get rid of the rest of the spam, I've been working on a new modification Spam****** (spam censor) which is intended to block spam by the post contents using similar techniques to those spam assasin uses on email spam. Realistically, content based filtering is the best way of dealing with spam, once a forum has configured the filters any post which isn't 'on topic' will get flagged as spam.

On Cable Forum we barely get more than a couple a month - the main reason being that as a UK forum, for a UK ISP, we block registrations from any IP that is not UK based.

These are the #'s over a 2 year period when we moved hosts.

Spam-O-Matic Statistics

18481 Spammers Denied Registration
204 Spammy Posts Automatically Moderated


Also have installed Spammers suck and have the emails turned off so no telling how many are blocked by that super simple super awesome script :)


We have email verification off (which is why the # denied by spam-o is high) and Q and A verification on registration.


We also have restricted the registered user group from posting pics, links, having avatars, having profile pics, and having signatures.


No visitor messaging allowed for anyone.


My team has to deal with maybe 3 human spammers a month.

Forgot to mention we also have a plug-in that limits the amount of periods you can have in an email for registering (that's stopped 2 legit members in the 4 months or so we've been using it).

Also forgot to mention that I have the following email address blocked in the ACP .info .tv .ru

is what it says yet we were manually removing around 30 spammers a day still, installed spammers suck yesterday and not one has got through, got security questions in, moderate all new registrations, what helped us is having a custom profile field that needs to be answered correctly which a spammer cant do

Since i started my new methods which include. (all from vb.org although GOLD is from BOP5)( the .htaccess thing is not part of vb or vb.org)
Stopforumspam
Recent Registration IP Check by BOP5 (GOLD)
Duplicate IP Report GOLD by BOP5
LancerForHire, LLC. - Bot Blocker
Fassim Anti Spam
Also a .htaccess auto ban method that ties in with the lancer mod.
Auto remove any account 10 days or older that has not posted.
Every new member is forced to one forum only where they are required to say gday.
We decided based on that if they get accepted. (no spammers have tried posting only a few regs)
Thats all i run for protection.
I implemented this on 2012-12-27
Not the same stats as the others above but still impressive IMHO.
3504 registrations that failed because of stopforumspam conditions.
120 permenently IP banned from the LancerForHire, LLC. - Bot Blocker method. (can be undone manually)
No idea how many Fassim Anti Spam blocked. Must be crap loads though.
I ban several countries..... Why... Dont ask you wont like my answer!!!!

Total real members is about 20 in that time lmfao!!! But my forum is crap so thats expected totally and quite normal. No problems from anyone trying to register or be accepted.

For me at the moment. Bots and spammers completely beaten.
Short term i know. But the way its setup now. 0 absolutely 0 of the buggers.

I feel guilty giving my mods nothing to do......

I can't even remember the last time I got any spam on my forums, let alone spam bots.

Lets hope it stays that way mate.
It used to piss me off giving link love to arsewhipes running xrummer.
Sure i tried every method but they still go through. Pretty much right through 4.0 until recently.
Not in great numbers ever but im a low PR site so thats why.
They just annoyed me the buggers lolz. Like most of us i imagine.

so after one night the email report sent me 378 mails about blocked registrations, i would have had to have manually deleted these and sifted through from real members and spammers

o pray do share what you do

One of my forums is local and has wide swaths of the planet barred. That's really nice when you can do that. The other is a global enterprise but still only gets maybe 2-3 a week (that actually post and require banning).

We're not really using much of anything on either right now except simple q&a's.

We rarely get spam 'bots.

I used to get a lot of spam and spam accounts, but that was 2 years ago when I didn't understand how important it is to always stay on top of what is going on in your forums.

I now know how to use .htaccess deny rules to block ranges and individuals who would constantly register on my site.

I think it helps out that I have joomla as my front page and I have 2 plugins that help me monitor who lands on my site's home page on a daily basis.

I also don't go overboard and add too many unnecessary mods and or add ons that might attract spam bots and spammers.

Choose wisely what you install on your forums and site, sometimes you can overdue it and attract more spammers by adding more than you should. I feel that sometimes these spammers and hackers see that you are trying so hard to keep them away that they try even harder just to prove to you that they can.






I just stay on top of my forums on a daily basis my Friend. I don't open the door for spammers and I do not over emphasize being on top of google's rankings.

I target a large genre, video gamers , video game clans and we get pretty decent traffic.

It also helps that my site has members who care about the site and always report suspicious activity.

Like I stated above, knowing how to use .htaccess has really helped me out.