Spam Problem - Please Help

[danielc2384]

I moderate a forum that is owned by a company. The forum admin has limited permissions, one of them being no access to "Plugins & Products" in the admin cp and no ftp access. If they did have access we would be able to install an anti spam hack.
We have tried contacting the company that has full control over the forum but they will not get back to us.

My question is what can we done to help stop the spam from coming through. I know there are anti spam options with vBulletin 3.7X but we are runing 3.6.1.

Is there anything that can be done?
We tried adding a required profile field but the bots just enter their username into that field.

Thanks

[UKBusinessLive]

Hi Daniel,

Its gonna be hard to sort your spam problem unless you have access to the adminCP, firstly you'll need to install a few decent anti spam mods as a matter of urgency as well as moderating new members posts all done via the admin CP.

First you need to ask yourself, does this company really have an interest in the running of the forum and if they can't be bothered then perhaps they need to give someone admin control.

Its nice to see a moderator that feels for the site but in plain facts, unless you get admincp control, your not going to have a lot of luck.

I take it you have Moderator status? You'll be able to ban them at least, if i was you mate, i'd get in touch with the company and offer your service as admin, see what they say, if you get no reply then you'll need to think is this site really worth fighting for??

We all hate spammers here, and we do what we can to help our fellow members, but whats worst is a site owner who do give a dam about security issues like this.

Good luck and let us know how you got on

[PhilMcKrackon]

Originally Posted by danielc2384

We tried adding a required profile field but the bots just enter their username into that field.

That is because your profile field will accept any input, doesn't really matter what is put in it. On an older board I admin for I created a simple user profile field that simply requires a zip code to be entered, if the wrong info is entered - no registration. By using a default entry and a simple regular expression it has stopped almost all spambots.

Very important! By placing a default value and a regular expression, the registration won't happen unless a valid zip code is entered. By placing the word "ZIP CODE" as a default vale the field is automatically invalid and must be correctly changed during registration.

Give it a try...


Under user profiles ---

Title: Zipcode

Description: This is used for human verification during registration. It is only visible to you. It must be five digits, optionally followed by a dash and four digits.

Default Value: ZIP CODE

Max length of allowed user input: 100

Field Length: 10

Profile Field Type: Single Line Text Box

Field Required: No but display at registration

Field Editable by User: Yes

Private Field: Yes

Field Searchable on Members List: No

Show on Members List: No

Regular Expression: ^([0-9]{5})(-[0-9]{4})?$

[danielc2384]

Thanks for the reply guys.

We do have someone that has been assigned admin but they have limited permissions. (no ftp access, no access to the plugins and products panel).

Thanks for the reply PhilMcKrackon. I'll pass that info on to the admin and hopefully it all works.
*fingers crossed*.

I guess thats one of the major down sides of the 3.6X series. No spambot options.

Also have all vBulletin forum been hit bad within the last month? I admin my own forum and the spam just didn't stop until I set up human verification. (I upgraded to 3.7X on that forum).

[PhilMcKrackon]

Originally Posted by danielc2384

I guess thats one of the major down sides of the 3.6X series. No spambot options.

Also have all vBulletin forum been hit bad within the last month? I admin my own forum and the spam just didn't stop until I set up human verification. (I upgraded to 3.7X on that forum).

Just an FYI - The oldest board I admin on is 3.0.x - that is the one I set up this profile field on and it works very well.

As for question #2, yes - new software was released that broke more captcha types including Google. There was more also that the software could do. After that, spam city!

[danielc2384]

Thanks for the help. We seem to be spam free now

[PhilMcKrackon]

Originally Posted by danielc2384

Thanks for the help. We seem to be spam free now

GREAT!!! It doesn't catch the humans but does a great job on the bots!

[UKBusinessLive]

Originally Posted by danielc2384

Thanks for the help. We seem to be spam free now

Glad to hear Dan