Hello,
I've had SMF installed for over a year now. Since pretty much the beginning my forum has been bombarded by spam accounts. I currently have 1400 members on my forum. I would say only a hundred are real accounts. The rest are bogus accounts with names like "bJohnsuzanp" or "7timothysmith9" or some garbage like that.
I have all of my settings as difficult as possible to create an account, but still they come. Very rarely do any of the accounts post anything that needs to be removed from the forum. Instead, they just sit there. The only thing I can think is that I must have installed a Mod that leaves a vulnerability.
I currently have the Youtube Mod, The Ad Mod, and the Global Headers and Footers Mod installed.
My questions is two fold.
#1. Does anybody have any idea what I can do to remedy this situation?
#2. Does anybody know of a quick and simple way to delete spam accounts en masse?
Thank you!
Yeah, the first remedy would be an anti-spam mod. Considering you are on 1.1.x, I'd recommend something like this mod:
http://custom.simplemachines.org/mods/index.php?mod=1516
It is a mod that has functionality included with 2.0. You can set up questions that guests must answer to successfully register on your site. I've been using it for a while now and change up the questions on about a quarterly basis. You can also look through other anti-spam mods here:
http://custom.simplemachines.org/mods/index.php?action=search;type=19
To massively delete members, you could try using this URL on your forum:
index.php?action=viewmembers;sort=posts;start=0
That will show you members with 0 posts at the start. You can click the check boxes and click Delete Selected Members. Rinse and repeat, just be careful not to delete real members when doing that.
http://custom.simplemachines.org/mods/index.php?mod=2155 (http://custom.simplemachines.org/mods/index.php?mod=2155) & http://custom.simplemachines.org/mods/index.php?mod=1095 (http://custom.simplemachines.org/mods/index.php?mod=1095)
Will help your forum from getting spammed.
Thanks mashby! We're all good now!