International Spam - Using up site resoursces

[JohnSG]

Hey Guys

Our site is having an issues where we get heaps of guest users, most of which are international and probably bots, trying to log in to our site to riddle it with spam. And this is having an effect on our sites resources. Several times it has caused our site to crash or our hosting provider to shut it down as its effecting other sites on the server. Any recommendation on what we can do to reduce the load and or make the forum more efficient.

We do already have run GlowHost - Spam-O-Matic

Cheers
John

[Big Al]

Hi John it seems that they are giving you a hard time.

There are some anti-spam programs and mods on this forum that may help!

The spammers are now entering a new phase where they have access to automated programs that are very good at posting spam. You need to be on top of deleting them asap, as once they get established they just grow.

It sometimes helps to block either their individual IP's or block the whole IP block.

You can also block certain countries if normally you do not get members from them. And unblock later if things calm down.

It is sometimes a compromise between letting members in and stopping spammers.

If their actions are resulting in your site being closed then you may have to take drastic measures to remain active.

Possibly the only good news I can pass along, is that I have found that actively deleting them immediately and constantly stopping them from earning any money from their links by deletion, often results in a drop off of their activity, after a reasonable short time. And then it only requires monitoring to keep them under control.

All the best in stopping the low life's from hurting your site.

[CAG CheechDogg]

My advise to you is to remove any mods that "prevent spam" as "I" personally believe that keywords within these mods is what actually attracts these spammers whether they are human or not.

I do not use any mods to prevent spam except this mod here (Ban Spiders by User Agent) that helps with all those bots, spiders and crawlers eating up bandwidth.

I also use a very good .htaccess code that completely eliminated those spammers from registering and posting on our forums.

If you need help with this send me a PM Buddy