Topic: Spam problems.

[scribblr]

I love the Board. It's the best forum software I've ever used.

During the past four months I have been plagued by spammers, operating mostly through servers in Russia, China, and the Ukraine. When I ban someone I check their forum profile and clear it of spam, as well as immediately removing any and all spam posts. The attempts have slowed dramatically as I've blocked every host used to post spam, including the hosts entire range of assigned addresses. It's becoming almost impossible for users to post through a server in Russia or China, but that's the price that must be paid in countries where they don't have safeguards in place to fight such activity. Now I'm seeing posts through servers in the former USSR countries, and countries in the Middle East including Iran.

I can handle the spammers, but what I'd like to see are separate lists of active members who have not been banned and a list of the banned members, or, at a minimum, the presence of a B between the ID and the Username on the Member List to show which members are persona non grata.

That would really help me keep a handle on things with about ninety-five percent of my current members list having been banned. I can't remove them or they could reestablish a membership.

Thanks for the great forum software.

[br360]

Banning spammers is really the last thing you want to do, as it will eventually slow your forum down considerably. I used to ban every spammer that registered and noticed the forum getting pretty laggy. Here is an older thread I started about it, and there was some really great advice offered from members- (especially that after I removed all of the bans, and put better systems in place, none of them actually ever came back) http://www.simplemachines.org/community/index.php?topic=509500.msg3592907#msg3592907

If you aren't comfortable blocking entire countries using your .htaccess, take a look at the mod site here for some of the spam mods- http://custom.simplemachines.org/mods/index.php?action=search;basic_search=spam

Also, have you added any questions that members have to answer when they register? If you can come up with two or three that are specific to your forum, you may see that spam registrations drop significantly just by doing that alone.

[Kindred]

we even have an FAQ entry about spam and how to prevent them from getting in in the first place...

http://wiki.simplemachines.org/smf/Spam_-_my_forum_is_flooded_with_spam,_what_can_I_do


You should be using the smf bans sparingly, if at all... and never for spammers.

[Omebolle]

If you use a captcha with images, be sure to replace the images with ones you provide yourself. The robots know all the default images and get through after a while.

I use "approval by admin"
A "captcha" with images I chose myself
A "Verification question"

Never had any spammers or false member requests again

[Kindred]

the whole point of captcha and questions (and the other anti-spam mods) is to avoid having to manually approve every account...

[KnownSyntax]

Honestly spammers will always be a problem, and like they stated banning spammers can make your forum slow down once you ban a lot of them. The main focus should be at the time of registering (since who cares if they eat bandwidth and go over what is visible to the public). By using stronger methods such as Q&A, better captchas (sorting items into a list, using images and dragging them over, or videos) it'll take longer and longer before you see any at all.

I think the worst thing would be to ban a whole country's view on your website, it kind of makes it unfair to those who live in spammer land but also are legit users who want to use your forum/website.