Holy Spammers?

S

Shahrier

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Well I've gotten around 5 spammers in the last 4 days, not bad, but yesterday, the only day I was too busy to go on my forums, I've gotten about 20 spammers that made about 50 spam posts. I don't know why my site is targeted like this but I guess the captcha isn't working. What else can I do to keep spam out?

Those 50ish spam posts consisted of e-Cigarrettes and Skiing only.. :/
 
Switch to the Q & A or install a CAPTCHA plugin such as sortables captcha that we use here - http://www.phpbb.com/customise/db/mod/s ... ha_plugin/

You are not being targeted specifically and neither is your site. These are automated bots that try to spam anywhere they can. This forum, your forum and even spam "honey pot" forums 😉

The default phpBB3 captcha has been "broken" for a while and it is not that effective. It does still stop alot but not as effective as other methods. This applies for the default CAPTCHA on most forum softwares to be honest. No method is 100% effective and we have alot of different layers of protection here but we still get spammers daily. You can reduce it but never stop it completely.
 
Fowler said:
Switch to the Q & A or install a CAPTCHA plugin such as sortables captcha that we use here - http://www.phpbb.com/customise/db/mod/s ... ha_plugin/

You are not being targeted specifically and neither is your site. These are automated bots that try to spam anywhere they can. This forum, your forum and even spam "honey pot" forums 😉

The default phpBB3 captcha has been "broken" for a while and it is not that effective. It does still stop alot but not as effective as other methods. This applies for the default CAPTCHA on most forum softwares to be honest. No method is 100% effective and we have alot of different layers of protection here but we still get spammers daily. You can reduce it but never stop it completely.
Click to expand...

We can avoid bots, but we can't avoid human spammers. :sad:
 
Fowler said:
Switch to the Q & A or install a CAPTCHA plugin such as sortables captcha that we use here - http://www.phpbb.com/customise/db/mod/s ... ha_plugin/

You are not being targeted specifically and neither is your site. These are automated bots that try to spam anywhere they can. This forum, your forum and even spam "honey pot" forums 😉

The default phpBB3 captcha has been "broken" for a while and it is not that effective. It does still stop alot but not as effective as other methods. This applies for the default CAPTCHA on most forum softwares to be honest. No method is 100% effective and we have alot of different layers of protection here but we still get spammers daily. You can reduce it but never stop it completely.
Click to expand...

Thanks, i was searching this mod, i am now using it on my forum also.
 
kavin said:
We can avoid bots, but we can't avoid human spammers. :sad:
Click to expand...
You can't permanently avoid bots. They do get more advanced all the time so there may come a time when the protection you have in place is no longer enough to stop them. Human spammers are impossible to stop completely unless you block the whole world from signing up
 
Fowler said:
kavin said:
We can avoid bots, but we can't avoid human spammers. :sad:
Click to expand...
You can't permanently avoid bots.
Click to expand...
I have not had one spammer on any of my last 3 forums I have made. I'll share some tips.

If you do not have active IPB license, thats okay. If you do, make sure you have the IPB spammer check on. Get an API from StopForumSpam.com.

Turn on recapatcha.

Turn on question and answers system on your forum and ask 2 questions, not just one.

Such as a math question and a color question. 😉
 
That is not to say that one day bots will be able to get past all those methods you mentioned. If you think back a few years and think about how advanced spam bots were compared to now, you will see that they can get past alot more measure now and the same will probably be the case in a few years time.
 
But there are so many possibilities a user can do with questions that it would be IMPOSSIBLE for a script to understand, so if the user can think of a question such as that, would be no problems.
 
Thanks, Fowler. I really need this because I got another crapload of spam today.
 
I guess you can turn it offline for a while or get a new CAPTCHA then sort everything out with that one on. It may be strong enough to keep the spam out. 😉
 
Chris Grigg said:
Have a look in here: http://gfxtutorials.com/forums/viewforu ... 7ea82b24c7

That forum contains a lot of spam.

But follow the advice above or turn your board offline, take care of the spam and then get some guards up. Spammers release Links to each other that are known to work, so if you don't do anything about it, more spammers will come.
Click to expand...
I deleted those around half an hour ago.. I have installed a new Captcha mod and I will see the results tomorrow.
 
Thanks, Susan. I have read it.

I am more so worried about bots because human spammers I can just delete with all their posts. There are so many bots that it takes a while to delete.

Also, the Sortable CAPTCHA mod was an easy installation and seems to be working with the preview and everything in the ACP, but I tried registering a test user and it didn't show up under Confirmation.
 
Just go to their profiles.
Click Administrate User.
Then delete their account and choose the option to delete their posts with it.
 
Q&A CAPTCHA would be good, and Anti-Spam ACP (due to integration with anti-spam databases) is also effective. Adding the spammers to stopforumspam.com wouldn't hurt either.

Lastly, one thing I really found effective was nofollowing signature links (and url BBCode tags) also very effectively drives down spam messages. After all, they're only there for the backlinks (though the Panda updates at Google have been rendering that strategy more and more redundant).
 
If you do add anti-spam ACP, i recommend disabling the checking of usernames against the SFS database as that can cause a few issues as alot of common usernames are in the database. Checking IP's and Emails are the most effective.
 
-Hiocoie- said:
Just go to their profiles.
Click Administrate User.
Then delete their account and choose the option to delete their posts with it.
Click to expand...
I already do so.

Because of the Q&A, I haven't gotten any spammers. I'll keep it until I see a lot of spam again.
 
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