Most effective way to elliminate spam

[al7forums]

Hello vBulletin,
My forum is completely infected with the most irratating spam bots around, image verification will not work on my forum when registering because I have not installed imageshik or the other thing on the server also email will not send, must be an exim problem is there any other way to do this?

Any help would be highly appreciated!

[veenuisthebest]

Then enable question/answers as a nospam measure, it is very effective. Also make sure you have Email verification ON.

Also, check out this guide
https://vborg.vbsupport.ru/showthread.php?t=193930

[Jafo232]

If you look up the IP's of who is posting the SPAM, I think you will find the usual culprits are in Russia, Saudi Arabia, etc.. This plugin will moderate those users for you:

https://vborg.vbsupport.ru/showthread.php?t=198440

Has stopped SPAM butt cold on my forums.

[Bawtneez]

You might also try this modification that doesnt allow certain Time Zones to register. Most of the spam bots are from strange, uncommon time zones. Works wonders on my forum as a lot of my spam bot morons came from random islands in the middle of the Indian Ocean.

[Jafo232]

Yeah, but the user can always change their clock. They cannot change the country origin of their IP unless they of course, hijack a PC or use some sort of proxy. Proxies are easy to IP ban because they are far from finite.

[dismas]

On one forum that I moderate, Forum A, I've found that spammers will still get through a question and answer type of system. While on another, Forum B, it has cut spammers to literally zero.

On Forum A, the spammers always pick birth dates of January 1, 1980 and the time zone selected is always Beijing, Perth, Hong Kong, Singapore. What I think makes the difference is the questions asked. For instance, the first question on Forum A is simply to copy a phrase into the reply box. The phrase is in quotes, so bots or whoever (even if they can't read english) know that something in quotes should be retyped. So they give it a shot and get in.

On Forum B, the questions are not something that non-English speakers are likely to understand and are rather localized since it's a forum dedicated to one of the states in the US. For instance, what is Vermont's fifth season?