Why does vbulletin atract spam?

[PPUS]

Originally Posted by guile09

I just thnk vbulletin should ship with multiple lines of defense. As it is right now, you can choose 1 form of spam prevention. I want to make it harder for spammers to get in, and harder for them to spam if they do.

New members should have to both answer a question and enter the captcha image text. After that, they should not be allowed to post links to other sites until they have x number of posts. They should also be limited to x number of posts per day until they reach a certain number. By the time a member reaches the post count where they can post links, you will have a pretty good idea if they are legit or not.

How do you set up both a custom question and the image? I have installed re-captcha to help thwart the bots but would like the added option too. Most of my spam came from humans as they go through the email verification but I know the bots will soon be on the way. I opened the forum this past week (converted from another board).

[Cryo]

Originally Posted by guile09

dmknights, I agree. In my honest opinion, vbulletin could be doing alot more to prevent or discourage spammers, yet instead of improving the features that already exist, the focus always seems to be on cramming more stuff in.

Part of what vB does to prevent spam is to have some a great modification system. Why focus on spam singularly when they can allow the users to handle it as their board needs it? You can include some very basic and easy usergroup promotions to limit what a new user can do. You can also use a spam filtering service in a default install that will check a user's submissions based on post-count to see if they're a spammer or not.

Originally Posted by guile09

These are 2 small changes that would go a long way in preventing spammers. If vbulletin can implement blogs and a CMS, this seems trivial. Members shouldn't have to download plugins/products to prevent spam.

I downloaded a single product to prevent spam, and I don't even really need it (link prevention). My board is very busy (12 million hits / month with over 1,000 active posters), I set it up the way I felt I needed to and it's exceedingly rare that I get any spam. Spammers are adaptive, and even if the vB team dedicated a ton of time and effort to preventing it they would just adapt and find ways around it. You need to find the solutions that work for you.

Originally Posted by guile09

I just thnk vbulletin should ship with multiple lines of defense. As it is right now, you can choose 1 form of spam prevention. I want to make it harder for spammers to get in, and harder for them to spam if they do.

It ships with 4 different forms of spam prevention - email verification, CAPTCHA verification, email domain banning (for getting rid of .cn / .ru registrations) and built-in support for (free) anti-spam services (Akismet and Typepad AntiSpam). If your board requires it you can add even more levels by using custom plugins. You could argue a 5th method with usergroup promotions as well.