Spam Accounts are Killing Me!

[e9coupe]

I have a small forum with about 2000 members and up to this point have been manually activating accounts. As of this week, the spam accounts have skyrocketted and I need to install some kind of MOD to help. What's the general concensous on the best MOD to use? I looked through the list and the multiple image captcha seemed decent, but I was hoping to get some opinions on what's out there...

Thanks,
Dan

[Lynne]

Use Q&A instead of capthcha. There are a few threads stickied at the top of the forums over on vbulletin.com on how to combat spam.

[e9coupe]

Originally Posted by Lynne

Use Q&A instead of capthcha. There are a few threads stickied at the top of the forums over on vbulletin.com on how to combat spam.

Thanks. I didn't think I was the only one. There must have been some New Year's resolutions added to some spammers.... "1) spam more!".

Dan

[kh99]

Same thing happened at our site starting Monday. This ZDBlock thing: http://www.spambotsecurity.com/zbblock.php seems to have helped a lot, although we did have some problems with members getting blocked when trying to use the the site from their phones.

Also I think that thing might work by completely blocking access from certain countries, which may or may not be something you want to do. (ETA:..although it is configurable, and maybe it doesn't block entire countries by default, I'm not sure).

[MrHorror]

Originally Posted by e9coupe

I have a small forum with about 2000 members and up to this point have been manually activating accounts. As of this week, the spam accounts have skyrocketted and I need to install some kind of MOD to help. What's the general concensous on the best MOD to use? I looked through the list and the multiple image captcha seemed decent, but I was hoping to get some opinions on what's out there...

Thanks,
Dan

I just manually activate accounts, the spammers give up eventually.

[e9coupe]

Originally Posted by MrHorror

I just manually activate accounts, the spammers give up eventually.

This is what I've been doing all along, but I'm getting over 100 bogus accounts a day now and it will get out of hand really fast. I'm also considering shutting down registration all together and directing them to a page asking to send an email to me with a username suggestion, then I would manually create the account. I only get about 2-3 new users a week on my forum.

[Lynne]

Unfortunately, everyone's site is different so there is no one-size-fits-all for a spam solution. You need to look at all the options and decide which ones would be best for you.

[ArchangelX]

I use the auto-delete plugin...the peeps register and get usernames, but are deleted after 5 days of non-compliance. So no noticeable effect. I did have over 30 new user accounts added just today, so it's a huge annoyance as far as that's concerned.

[RavenSteve]

Us the stopforumspam mod. It works like a champ.