avoiding spam before launch
 

Hi,

I am to launch an updated version of a website. The original website had a message forum for around 4 years which had an uncontrollable amount of spam users and posts, all viagra, porn, etc. I tried most of the anti-spam methods from vbulletin.com to no avail. The forum is now offline, however I am going to launch it again including a vbulletin forum and vbcmps and I want to be sure I minimize the amount of spam as much as possible.

What can I do - as everything I try doesn't seem to work. It would appear the domain im using is on a spam list or something?

Thanks,

100% stop spam in its tracks. by 100% I mean ALL.

Had the same problem as you, was on a bunch of spam lists as an easy forum target...

Heres the solution that is built into vBulletin...

- Add a custom question on signup in your admin control panel.

Something like "Whats the opposite of hot?"
answer: cold

thats it.

They cant sign up, they cant post.

Result: More time to read books.

I know, that simple question is really amazing. I had about 4 spammers join and the email addresses looked funny, so I looked them up online. Sure enough, they were spam bots, so I added the question right away.

Luckily, I banned them before they could post. I haven't had any porn post on my site. A few people spamming, but they get in one post and then are deleted. Nothing too bad though. That question works great.

Makes sense, but why wouldn't the CAPTCHA that is always (I am running 3.8.2) there stop the spammers just as well?

I've been getting a moderate amount of SPAM - maybe one post a day or so, and we ban the user, ban the IP address, and report the details to
http://www.stopforumspam.com/add
to help others.

One thing I did just modify is that I made it so that even usergroups "Users Awaiting Email Confirmation" and "(COPPA) Users Awaiting Moderation" must "Require Human Verification on Configured Actions," not just "Unregistered / Not Logged In." Maybe this will help.

I also changed the verification option from Image Verification to reCAPTCHA™ Verification which is supposed to be better.

captcha is not perfect. Spammers use ocr to beat it. I posted the solution if you ever want it to stop completely.