I have a forum that have been floated with spam-how do I stop this ?Any MODs-antyspam or so…Is build with
php-any suggestions will be at big help!
@tony5885 - I’ve moved this thread to the “Web Security” section of the forums, where hopefully you’ll get some useful replies.
Thank a lot-I was wondering where to place it and as usual made a wrong choice…Love this forum!!Will be here for a long long time!!Thank!!
I assume that you already have an anti-spam plugin installed. Make sure that you’re targeting the right terms so the anti-spam filter puts those comments into moderation and people can’t see them. A good configuration and good terms may reduce the amount quite a bit.
Still, plenty of the spam here is handle by us, the moderators.
It may be worth to check Ips. Although banning an IP would mean that a possible real user may not be able to access your forum, if you are receiving plenty of spam from the same IP, it may be worth to consider a IP ban.
Thank a lot-but I do not get any advise???What MOD I have to install?
How are we going to help if you do not tell us what forum software is being used?
OO sorry!It is phpBB tipe…Thanks a lot!!
I’ve found great successes with KeyCaptcha, however I’m unaware if they offer a version for phpBB. I’m sure they do, go check it out.
in my experiance, spammers are in our times no longer “bots” or scritps in most of the cases…
=> low-salary workers i.e. in china are spammers…
those guys will manually break all your security and captchas because they are “legit human users”…
though they have bad intentions…
Only way I had success with on a video-portal is “admin validation of blogs” (in my case)
So im not sure, if there is a mod that helps or a captcha that helps for a forum…
if you can, block china by IP completely!!
if you need that audiance - have fun with deleting manually…
regards
Hensel
Personally I don’t do a lot with phpBB however dimly recall there being
a ‘bad word filter’ plugin and that once loaded with a selection of
keywords to watch out for this should catch most of the link spam.
The other great deterent commonly used by many forums is to make
user submitted links show with the nofollow attribute. This means
the links are useless for SEO and the spammer may not get paid for
posting them.
Try asking in the phpBB users forum ,
they could have a readymade solution or patch.
Agreed, the only 99% full proof anti-spam method is manual authorization. Also by denying China access to your servers, you benefit a lot, but sometimes some people are running their websites to benefit from the Chinese market as well. There are pros and cons, so unless you need Chinese business / audiences, then it’s best to just block the entire country.
I personally think China has a lot of potential and that’s why I don’t block them. It’s unfortunate that a vast majority of spammers are located in China though.
I must be unlucky then as I am getting a wagon load of stateside IP’s spamming
real-estate and insurance links for companies in the Mid-West… go figure. Yet to
have any from China showing in the logs, could be they have better proxies or
ones not listed but it’s unlikely.
Thank a lot every one!!!We will see what going to happen!!!
Agreed . I think so many people out there that make a service of Captcha Solving problem to make their Automation Spamming tools worked perfectly.
I run VB forum. It’s an active forum. I banned IPs from China and Russia. That didn’t help much. Because the spammers started using Singlehop servers and other servers in U.S. Singlehop is notorious for promoting spam registrations. Now, I moderate each registration. This is the only way to stop spammers, IMHO.
I see that the same spamming group is trying to spam sitepoint as well. If you look at “currently active users” in forum home page, you will see lots of weird usernames. I wonder how sitepoint handles the spams.
Viv,
As a FORMER SitePoint TL, the main protection is the outstanding (volunteer) moderator staff. However, because the SitePoint rules are often interpreted differently by each mod AND SitePoint HQ is reluctant to take any additional steps (i.e., contact ISPs re spamming the forum), SP will always be subject to spammers.
Regards,
DK
Whilst every effort is made (as with most other forums), we do get a high volume of spammers registering each day.
One good thing to come out of it is that we have a developed a suite of Greasemonkey scripts that find and highlight them based on a variety of criteria.
Couple that with some super dedicated staff members and it make a formidable anti spam force!
This makes our job easier but we still remove 200+ accounts a day and we are also going back through the membership to remove sleeper accounts.
Yes, it’s laborious and yes, it takes time/manpower but it is worth it.
Ah, Rémon’s been at work with his scripting I see! Gudonim!
Thanks for the reinforcement on my post about how SP handles spammers.
Again, the volunteer staff at SitePoint is excellent and keeps things going for all members.
Regards,
DK