What's your best way to stop spammers?

Started by Eagleye, August 01, 2016, 05:21:24 AM

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Eagleye

Hi all, I have set up my forum and love it but 1 hour after I set it up I have 100plus registered users and the welcome to sfm post had 600 views it's now about 7800 views.

I made it so all new users had to verify email this limited the attempts but a few are still getting through an posting links to porn, sex toys etc.

So I made it so users need to say hello before they see the forums this didn't work as intended and it's just flooded with porn and other crap.

I've banned loads but they just keep coming. I looked in ban triggers and there's like 400 attempts to sign in.

What's ways have you stopped these spammers or spam bots from accessing your forums as its starting to annoy as they don't post 1 they post repeatedly till ban is in place and then I need to delete each one takes ages.

Thanks

Irisado

Bans are not the best way of handling spammers.  You best bet is to stop them from registering in the first place.  A number of suggestions for preventing spam are outlined here: http://wiki.simplemachines.org/smf/Spam_-_my_forum_is_flooded_with_spam,_what_can_I_do.
Soñando con una playa donde brilla el sol, un arco iris ilumina el cielo, y el mar espejea iridescentemente

firemun

The most effective method I use to mitigate spam is by setting up security questions relevant to my niche.

For example, I run the largest message forum for the US National Skywarn Storm Spotter program. One of my security questions are 'What do the O in NOAA mean?" NOAA stands for National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, a government entity that is very relevant to Skywarn. Storm spotters should know what that agency stands for since they provide the program in the first place. A bot or a simple spammer isn't going to figure it out. Some security questions might even have to be searched by real members, that is fine... That helps teach them how to search haha something us forum owners are hopeful for right? :P

I do say mitigate above though. You are not going to stop all spam, some are going to slip through the cracks. You can modify your community to require certain member activity before they are allowed to post links, signatures and etc. and have an active staff team that will seek and destroy spammers quickly. My Storm Spotter forum staff almost get off on crushing spammers... I never get to ban them anymore lol the staff always get them before I can :''''( :P

Rust

StopForumSpam was the most effective countermeasure I've used over the years.  It can be used with SMF.  Better board software, such as Xenforo, have it built in.

Phphelp

I set up a large bank of questions and make user answer a few of them, I no longer get spam registrations.

It's the most effective way I found.

The new google captcha might work also.

firemun

Quote from: Rust on September 03, 2016, 11:25:27 PM
StopForumSpam was the most effective countermeasure I've used over the years.  It can be used with SMF.  Better board software, such as Xenforo, have it built in.

As a XF license holder, SFS built in is nice but you are unable to disable certain parts of it. Usernames for example... If I were to join a XF forum using the username 'Shawn' I'd likely get qued as potentially being a spammer because many spammers have used common names many times. I think email is really the only good item to detect spammers using SFS personally.

Kindred

Also, I take exception to the characterization of xenforo as "better".

Personally, I really think that smf is a "better" system, keeping the core clean and simple but allowing features to be added, very a silly, with the available mods.

On the other hand, as alreayd pointed out, SFS is actually not be best solution, since there are hundreds of false positives which will affect your real users.   SMF's built in question feature is the best frontline defense against spammers, especially when used in combination with SFS checking (but not blocking) and bad behavior + httpbl
Слaва
Украинi

Please do not PM, IM or Email me with support questions.  You will get better and faster responses in the support boards.  Thank you.

"Loki is not evil, although he is certainly not a force for good. Loki is... complicated."

live627

QuoteSFS is actually not be best solution, since there are hundreds of false positives which will affect your real users. 
then set  it to admin approval whenever a registrant is flagged.

wedealantiques

Besides using the methods mentioned here, the additional step I have added to keep them from even visiting the site any longer is using the IP Blocker utility provided by my hosting service via the cPanel. Now my Guest number is far more accurate.

d3vcho

Actually, that tool can affect real users...
"Greeting Death as an old friend, they departed this life as equals"

wedealantiques

Quote from: d3vcho on November 16, 2016, 03:55:01 PM
Actually, that tool can affect real users...

True, but you have to be conscious of what range you are actually restricting.
What I typically see from these bots is a range from the same IP subnet (the first three octets are all the same xxx.xxx.xxx [nofollow].*), so if I can restrict a range down to the last octet, it's pretty safe to know you are only restricting the offenders and not the rest of the internet crowd.

paulosebin

I have problems with various site projects. It is common, here in Brazil, spam robots to crawl the sites, generating confusion in Google Analytics reports, for example. What I do is block by Htaccess.

vevomack

try on manual approval of post and comments.

Kindred

absolutely not...   on a busy forum, that would absolutely kill an admin.   it is better to stop them before they even register ---- as we pointed out
Слaва
Украинi

Please do not PM, IM or Email me with support questions.  You will get better and faster responses in the support boards.  Thank you.

"Loki is not evil, although he is certainly not a force for good. Loki is... complicated."

bendigital

Does anyone know how to stop or at least minimize real people (not robot) with intention to spam?

This kind of spammers can still pass the spam prevention tool, since they are real humans trying to register.


All of the biggest technological inventions created by man – the airplane, the automobile, the computer – says little about his intelligence, but speaks volumes about his laziness. – Mark Kennedy

Kindred

Good questions will help.

Other than that... no, not really any good way to do so
Слaва
Украинi

Please do not PM, IM or Email me with support questions.  You will get better and faster responses in the support boards.  Thank you.

"Loki is not evil, although he is certainly not a force for good. Loki is... complicated."

wedealantiques

Quote from: bendigital on January 04, 2017, 07:07:14 PM
Does anyone know how to stop or at least minimize real people (not robot) with intention to spam?

This kind of spammers can still pass the spam prevention tool, since they are real humans trying to register.

You can block by IP, but if they are smart spammers and use proxies, good luck.

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