How to control spam sign ups at my forum

I run forum which is given in my signature. The forum has started to receive visitors but most of them are spammers. They come to the site, sign up and leave their website name in signature. They are using my forum for creating angela paul links.

I want to stop these spammer and would be grateful if you anyone could suggest me something to tackle this problem.

Thanks in advance.
Sam

 

Strange you're asking this since you're a member of this forum. On this forum you can't have a signature unless you get 3 likes.

Don't allow a signature unless a member gets 3 likes or posts at least 20 posts or has been a member for at least 10 days.

 

On myBB 1.8, go to Users & Groups -> Groups -> Users & permissions. You can set the number of posts required before sigs become active. You'll find many of them will be leaving links in their profiles too.

 

You didn't get my point. People with the help of software using my forum to build angela paul backlinks for their website. Angela paul backlinks are the links that come from profiles of the users. While sign up, I don't have any option to hide "Home page" field. So they sign up, put their website and it becomes a backlink for their website. The profile is visible for everyone without login.

Yes, I did install one plugin which allows me to restrict users from putting link in their signature. I have set the limit to 25. But here my concern is different. Have a look at one spam profile http://www.chatappforum.com/User-beemiabub
Here you will see this person has put garbage link under "Home page" option and I am sure it has done using some software.

 

I see. Consider changing your current forum software to https://xenforo.com/

A lot of work, but if your current forum keeps growing, at the end, you will be glad you did.

 

I am with low budget and want to stick to myBB as yet.
Now, the other problem has arose. The spammers are signing up and posting garbage just to increase their post count. All the content they are posting is some other language and I guess it doesn't make any sense. Any idea how to control them apart form manual monitoring?

 

Just make sure only humans sign up~ here is a huge topic full of plugins ect for mybb http://community.mybb.com/thread-110224.html

 

Exdeus and Sarah,

Thanks for the help. I will try the methods you suggested.

Thanks
Sam

 

10 years ago I launched a social networking site. Once it started to gain popularity I had spammers writing custom scripts to join my site and send mass email. I implemented a captcha system and they found other ways to spam on the site.

I also had another social site which only had a few thousand members and somehow Nigerian scammers found that site and started to spam. Anyway...moral of the story these inbreds will do anything to spam on your site. Usually if they are exploiting a commonly used forum the smallest change can stop their scripts but if they are custom writing code just for your site good luck...they will work just as hard to find a work around.

 

A little off the subject..... I chuckled at the theme of your site. It's a forum to talk about chat applications.... Not trying to be a dick here but how do you expect to retain members who can only conversate with others about the application they use to conversate with others on.. It almost seems to be a one stop forum

 

Thanks for the comments but I have plans with it. Obviously I wouldn't disclose it in public.

Cheers
Softech

 

I bet......