Dealing with competitors spamming your users?

So, if you guys have any competitors to worry about - and they come to your community to spam - what are some of your methods of dealing with these issues?

Do you censor their url? Do you just ban the accounts and ip, or?
Or do you make it so users need to be approved before they have permission to post links?

 

I dont think any competitor would be that low enough to spam my users with their sites. But if they do its an auto permanent ban.

 

Ban/Ip Ban to anyone if they did that, it's pretty low to poach members

 

Yea it can be very annoying when people spam advertise and specially PM advertise.

 

Yeah, they are the hardest type to spot.

 

Yea, i know... the only thing I can rely on is that members report those PMs.
By the way there is a Report PM mod for xenforo, its very usefull..

 

I don't think any true competitor would result in spamming. They would be serious enough an admin to focus on their own forum and not look to spam others. However, simple things like 5 posts before you can add a signature, or disabling the PM system for members with under x amount of posts could help if a problem does arise.

 

I agree, I am waiting for mods like this to be made available for xenforo, or be incorporated into it.

 

I do a simple ban and ip ban... You can't let anything through or else it will become a mess

 

Advertising and spam (outside of their allotted sections) are not allowed and I just warn and ban as deemed necessary for both offenses. No big deal, really.

 

I prefer to get the ban hammer out and instantly ban their username, email, IP, and remove all violating Posts & PMs, etc. as they'll get bored if their posts keep getting removed each time

 

I agree but im telling you their are some that wont give up. During the time adminbb was spammed it was all the same person, and replied to certain threads that made me even more aware who it was.

 

My members actually go on our arch enemy's site and tell all their friends about my site.
They censored the link to my forum and the admin reads through member PMs (which I think is a breach of privacy) but that doesn't stop them, they're pretty creative. I've got a good community going so I depend on my members to report these things, and once they do, an IP/e-mail ban is made. Other than that, I don't try to fight it actively, I don't even censor our "enemies" because they don't worry me, but it seems that I worry them.

 

Going through PMs is actually illegal in some places. And yea thats sad to here lol.

 

Ban to be honest

 

I give them one chance. If it continues IP Ban and I never have to worry about you or your site again.

 

The only thing you can do is keep banning them in that case. Turn on admin approval of new accounts if your software allows that, and that will help you fight it.

 

I had a client I built a forum for a couple years ago. He wanted to pay me to spam two of his competitors. I told him it's against their TOS and probably the law, so he did it himself. Admittedly, it did bring over a few members but the forum died a few months later so he told me to pull the plug.

 

That's really low.

 

I agree. Thats as low as it gets.