Yes, this is a great post and the points mentioned are extremely valid and quite successful in reducing the amount of spam post by spam-bots and human spammers. On our forum, we have implemented many of the techniques mentioned on the lists here in this thread and it seems as thought the spam posts have been cut down by over 90% due to making a minimum post count before posting links and also eliminating some key phrases from being allowed to post. The mods are obviously a huge assistance in keeping the forum as spam free as possible!
I will try some of the tips given in here - the banned IP address one sounds good.
The problem with email activation is that emails could go to the SPAM folder. Most email users dont check their Spam folder unless told to do so.
Which is why the good email activation prompts will tell people to check their spam folders in case they don’t see their activation email.
If you’re using vB, there’s a mod over in vB.org that changes the order of email verification. It will send an email before allowing a user to proceed with registration. This helps prevent a lot of inactive account & cut down on bot registration without using captcha (in case your server doesn’t meet the requirements).
limit posts for url…
Great post! I think email validation is an effective and easy way. But I’ve also seen some softwares that can do email validation automatically. That’s really a long war between webmaster and the spammer:)
Good Post on how to prevent spamming.
Thanks…
thank you very much for a very informative thread… i think of sum lack questions but i think having the best mod will bring every forum at it’s best. thank you very much for this thread.
Some very good tips. I hadn’t even thought of the memberlist spamming and editing old posts.
how come many here got more than 8 sig??? isn’t that overkill already?
Im planning to put on my own forum, may i ask what software you use on your forum so that every tips you have said is available in that software? is it free?
oh god i was waiting for such tips long time now. My forum is being attacked by so many spammer, putting all porno stuff in it. Thanks to you man, i can now fix this.
I am a member of a forum that is hosted on Invision Power Board v2.1.7.
The forum’s been getting spammed recently and the moderators seem to react to the spam - that is they remove it - rather than implementing any specific measures.
I’ve suggested that they do measures such as ensure that all new members have to post ‘X’ number of posts before they are allowed to post pictures, e-mail validation for new members so that when a new members joins, a moderator sends a question via e-mail such as “What is the capital of France?”. Incorrect answer - membership deleted.
I posted today to say that I would like to see some proactive measures made so that I don’t get explicit porn being displayed whilst I’m at work or whilst the kiddies are around. Their reply was that they would have to pay to upgrade the forum software in order to implement any anti-spam measures. Is that likely to be correct? I have an unused SMF forum and I know that I can suspend a new member from posting until I (or any other moderator) allows. This means that I can implement such measures as random questions for newbies.
In SMF, I can also do stuff like not allowing URLs for the first ‘x’ posts, same with pictures. I would have thought that this was standard across all forums - am I wrong in my thinking?
As far as I am aware, none of the admin on the forum know anything about PHP.
Many thanks in advance.
Even though i followed your advice, i still am getting spamming in some of my areas in forum. what should i do
if you are serious on running a forum… allow members to post link after 50 posts…
“Use human validation” (capchas)… today it could be a security problem in your forum…
Tip number three, “Prevent new users posting links”, actually generates more spam on the forum, in my opinion.
That is because the new user will post 10 spam messages on various threads just to satisfy the “10 post minimum” forum rule and to add more spam via external links.
Speaking from experience here, they’d be caught and banned before they could reach that magic number.
If anybody is using Rails I’d recommend acts_as_snook.