Influx Of Spam On Forum

[TheMovieman]

Over the past two days my forum as been innodated with spammers. I previously had immediate registration so after cleaning up the posts and banning users (and deleting their accounts), I changed the registration to account activation via e-mail. Well, this morning I found 3 more spam posts and several more who registered but still needed to get their account activated.

 

I've since deleted all those posts/accounts and banned certain e-mail addresses and what not, but what can I do?

[TCH-Bruce]

Is your forum software current? Add a captcha to your registration form if you don't already have one. Check for plugins to your forum software that combats spam.

[TheMovieman]

Yeah, it's up to date. I went on SMF's website and apparently others are getting innodated with spam as well.

[OJB]

3 spam messages man, I get roughly 50 a day on my site. My spamproof method is to force all new members to have their first 2 posts moderated. Once 2 posts have been approved they upgrade to a full member account with posting privileges. It works perfectly in the sense that NO spam ever reaches the public eyes, but its annoying having to clean out 50 posts a day (at least) of filthy I AM A SPAMMER and **** adverts!!!

 

This is with IPB, so I dont know if this can be done with SMF.

[TheMovieman]

^ Yeah, unfortunately I haven't found a way to do that with SMF

[TCH-Bruce]

It is possible.

[MRM4TN]

I was having the same problem. It appears the bots have found a way to get through SMF's CAPTCHA. I installed the reCAPTCHA mod and bots have ceased to sign up. The reCAPTCHA mod is the one where there are two words that have to be typed in during registration, usually with a line through both words. I have seen this used on some online ticket purchasing sites. So far, so good on my forum.

[bellringr]

We've been having the same problem with around 20-25 a day, almost all from eastern Europe or Africa. Only one actually finished the activation and posted. Still, I'll try that reCaptcha this weekend. I'm tired of getting all the e-mails.

[carbonize]

I assume you are all on 1.1.17 and so I recommend either the reCaptcha package or the Advanced Captcha package. Both of which should help stop the spam.

 

I'm running SMF 2 beta 4 and it has additional anti spam options such as making them answer a random question (that you set) along with the captcha or even instead of it. There is also the Askimet package you might want to look at.

 

BTW I disabled anti spam on my forum for 30 seconds the other day when updating and received 7 spam posts in that time. Both my forums and guestbook are under constant attack but thankfully they never get through.