Hey there.
Recently http://advertise4free.org has been receiving members who are signing up and posting illegal guides such as "Put dvd onto your ipod". We have had many different members signing up and doing this.
It is a blatant attempt to advertise illegal software and we do not allow illegal software to be advertised on the forum.
I have enforced and new rule explaining this so members have been warned.
Is there anything we can do to stop annoying members from spamming the forums?
They are media bots advertising sites and software. Try to encorporate anti-spam features and mods etc. Every forum so far that I visit are being hit by them, on all software. On a side note, FP is also getting slightly baffled by guides that no one wants -D-
Thanks. Ok. Any spam mods you recommend? Also can you explain how the mod works?
We are locking the topics, banning the members and removing every link and image that is in the topic. Might just take away there permission to post images and links.
I am unfortunately not fluent in the world of PhpBB for mods etc. I'm sure Christian or someone with more background knowledge in modding PhpBB can give you a few pointers -😉-
Actually, it is not illegal to copy the digital image of a DVD and convert it to iPod format for private personal use, that's one law that they've yet to pass. The guides arn't illegal, but I can still see you probably don't want the same one a million times.
There are many anti-spam bot MODs out there. Of course, if you really hate spam bots, code a custom script for your forum and include a type of login that is currently unheard of on earth ~lol~
We have a mod that stops people signing up using the -12 timezone. The spammers we get sign up mostly use UTC +8 which is China/Australia. I have also noticed a few spammers posting these software topics using UTC +0. Alot of spam is from China what we have found here and they seem to not be using bots to signup. We have the question and answer mod and they can still sign up which signals that it is a bit of a mix between bots and humans. Humans sign up and the bots log in and post. That way whatever protection you have they can post. However they do it it doesn't only come from utc-12 timezone. That mod alone won't stop it and the question and answer mod alone won't stop them. Together they both don't stop spam either.
Block IP ranges in cpanel of ip's that spam which you won't get any members using. We have banned multiple ranges of ip's from china where we were getting 3 or 4 signups a day from between them spamming the forum to death with sometimes over 10 posts at once posting spam links and stuff. There is no way to stop spammers 100%.
