How do you fight spam in your forum

[MichaelGoldman]

So what hacks do you use to stop spam bots from registering and posting in your forums?

Lets see some suggestions on this

[Adrian Schneider]

I use this hack here,
https://vborg.vbsupport.ru/showthread.php?t=131568

Allows you to send posts to the moderation queue if they are from new users and contain certain keywords that you define.

I'm also working on another one to help process through the spam posts and ban the spammers with less clicks.

[Code Monkey]

Personally, I like banning them myself. It is a satisfying experience. Yesterday I banned two while they were registering. That was quite fun. Silly fools need to learn not to use the words mobile or phone in their email address.

There is also a mod some people use that compares posts to an offsite database of spam. Not sure I would want that for each post though. Could eat up some bandwidth.

[Immortal_Shades]

Ugh I cant even tell you how many times in the past few months we had to bann this mobile phone guys and their scams. The sad thing is they offer great deals on phones and it is a huge scam to collect people's money and jerk them.

I have tried incorporating some anti spam hacks to keep these spammers out!
I seriously despise spammers!

[BigJimTheLug]

There are three types of spam you need to worry about: 1 = bots spamming your forum; 2 = spiders crawling your site for email addresses; 3 = members registering with website names. The other tips to prevent spam are somewhat already known

To prevent form 1)

I have a heavily censored board, (At least I think so) and whenever someone types in a "no-no" word, they get replaced with 'I love mysite.com, it is a great place..."). So even if bots register to spam, and post a message, there is a big chance it will be filtered out.
vbseo also helps with filtering out certain types of registrations.

To prevent form 2)
Place this button on your forum ->

It gives spiders who crawl your site for email addresses bogus emails.

To prevent form 3)
Go to your admincp and look at options panel, I believe it is the registration option or somethign related to users and look for where it ask you about user names or characters that are prohibited or something close to this -- to be used as user names.

Then, choose whether you want to prevent members from registering with www.look.com or whatever.


On number 3 above, I just choose to prevent users from registering with a period in their user names ----> . <---- But I allow www and http


Oh yeah, I'm not sure about your forum, but my forum is in an industry that is often times filled with scammers, hackers, phishers, and the like, so I also blocked executable files from being linked to my forum.

If you link www.mysite.com/clickhere.exe on my forum, the .exe will be replaced with the censorship message I have in place.

Also, if you get members that sign up to get signatures, make them do work and earn the signature, so that they don't spam your forum with their signatures.

For my forum it takes 50 "quality" post to be able to use a signature, earn a badge, and send private messages.


Also, you might want to look at modifications that make banning easier, as well as prevent certain "troublesome email addresses from signing up.

Oh yes, one last thing, turn off all if not most features for guest.
Install the hack that allows you to resolve an ip hidden behind a proxy.
And tell your members/guest that you can find their ips and will not hesitate to turn them into the appropriate authorities if need be.

I think a privacy statement covers that.

[theodonnells]

Originally Posted by SirAdrian

I use this hack here,
https://vborg.vbsupport.ru/showthread.php?t=131568

Allows you to send posts to the moderation queue if they are from new users and contain certain keywords that you define.

I'm also working on another one to help process through the spam posts and ban the spammers with less clicks.

I use this and it works extremly well, havent had any spam showing to members since i installed it..Thanks SirAdrian.

[MichaelGoldman]

thanks for tips, but i'm looking for something to do the work for me actually..

There're like 5-10 new spam messages from new bots posted on my forum every day and that would be too much work to ban them manually.

So I'm actually looking for some hacks to delete duplicate posts (since spammers are usually lazy and they post the same stuff all over) and some plugins to ay be disallow siggy links before a certain number of posts is reached..

[Distance]

You could get some decend moderators

[BigJimTheLug]

Originally Posted by MichaelGoldman

thanks for tips, but i'm looking for something to do the work for me actually..

There're like 5-10 new spam messages from new bots posted on my forum every day and that would be too much work to ban them manually.

So I'm actually looking for some hacks to delete duplicate posts (since spammers are usually lazy and they post the same stuff all over) and some plugins to ay be disallow siggy links before a certain number of posts is reached..

For the signature, I use a promotion system.

If spammers are posting the same comments over and over, then use your censorship options and replace their comments with something else.

There is a lot you can do, admin wise that will do the trick.

A few forums prevent duplicate threads and post from being started. Mine does.

[WhaLberg]

No one is spamming in my forum.