How do you deal with Spam?

How do you deal with spam on your forums? I do the best I can to try to block them by having email account activation turned on, I also have StopForumSpam integrated into the forums to prevent spam for joining.

Just in case any spam joins, xenforo has a easy one click way to get rid of them. Its called the Spam Cleaner, you simply click on the button (can be found in their posts, profile, membercard, etc) And you check a few boxes, and it delete's the spammers posts, and threads.. and automatically bans them. So it isnt a hassle to delete their spam.

If you guys havent heard.. reCAPTCHA has been cracked (Major Scipts use it such as forums, blog, etc.) So be prepared for spam on your forum. You guys can read about it here http://admin-talk.com/threads/google-recaptcha-cracked.1029/

So what are the ways you deal with spam on your site?

 

The new way for spam registrations is out sourcing to real people, people pretty much sit on the computer and are payed a certain amount to signupt on so many forums so you cant do much to prevent them other than having email verification turned on
a smart captcha like recaptcha
a are you human question such as "Are you human? (Hint: type yes)" or "what is 2+2?" etc.

but if they are actual humans signing up there inst much you can do against it other than banning and deleting their posts

 

Yes, there isnt much to do when it actually is people but yea Question + reCaptcha is always good from preventing automated spam. And also integration with sites such as stopforumspam is one of the best things to do. Just to point out ReCaptcha was cracked so it really wont do much against automated spam, but the Q & A will, so its best to have both.

 

yeah somone will probably come out with a better system than recaptcha or they will just update/rewrite their system to get rid of the vulnerability

 

I hope so because we have been dealing with spam on adminbb which started yesterday.

 

Delete it with the lovely one-click-ban system

 

oh i logon 3-4 times a day just to delete spam xD

gets pretty annoying but its fairly easy to do, but i doubt im getting all of it

 

That's actually my favorite feature on PHPBB is the one click ban system. It saves time so you don't have to manually ban everything... the whole thing is automatically banned at once, and depending on the severity of the issue which caused them to be banned in the first place, you do have the option to click a button that reports the person to StopForumSpam. There are no forms to fill out or anything when you go that route. Simply tick the box that says something like, "report member to stopforumspam?" and it's done.

 

It's not default in phpBB, but it's a great mod

 

I would actually recommend this mod for anyone who owns a PHPBB forum of any kind. No matter what genera of forum you're running, this mod comes in quite handy.

 

Agreed, http://www.stopforumspam.com/ = Amazing.

 

Yep it is, i love it.

 

I install the latest anti spam, and when they do get through, I simply ban them and delete their posts, it's no biggie on vb and ipb and xf, but on mybb its a little different cos you have to go to their profile, click view all posts, check every post and then scroll to the delete button.

 

Yea MyBB should get some type of quick spam removal, on xf its called the Spam Cleaner, with a few clicks you can delete all of their posts and ban them at the same time, and if they aren't spam you can also restore them as the posts deleted by the spam cleaner are soft deleted.

I have been taking alot of measure to prevent spam. Im doing just about everything to prevent it like anti spam mods like the StopForumSpam integration, alot of Q&A's Captcha during signup, etc.

 

We tried the whole, activation of account by email and questions to try and stop spammers, but it doesn't work real well. The only way I have found to deal with spammers is just to delete their posts and ban everything from their account (username, IP Address & email). Most of the time it works, sometimes the really persistent ones find a way to come back.

Never understood spammers. Surely they have better things to do than come on someone's forum and try to ruin it.

 

Well it depends really, if they are actual humans you cant do anything at all to stop them, Q&A and email activation plus other anti spam mods is the best you can do. AdminBB has email acct turned on along with Multiple Q&A's with StopForumSpam integration. Its doing pretty well for us.

 

constantly banning their IPs, and you can run the risk of banning genuine visitors. Email activation, Q&A specific questions or some form of JS Captcha, and custom profile fields should stop most of them.

 

That's what I was always afraid of on the IP's, but didnt' know what else to do. I was limited with my hosts. If I ever do start up a forum again, I'll be sure to get better way to stop them.

 

Well wish you the best you can also read http://admin-talk.com/threads/ban-quick-email-providers-from-your-forum-prevent-spam.1051/

 

I personally hate the "Admin Activation", it's cumbersome for the admin AND the user.