Spam in bidding directories

I'm getting tons of spam submissions in my bidding directories, tens of thousands of spam links..

Even had a programmer add a captcha to the submissions form, but still doesn't help.

Anyone having the same problem, how do you deal with it?

 

Are you using the latest version phplb which includes a captcha? Then you can overwrite it with Mike's math captcha for less spam.

 

hm I guess mine isn't the latest. I haven't upgraded it for a while.
Is it easy to upgrade an existing dir, without damaging the db?

link me to that Mike script pls

 

The CAPTCHA in effect does nothing, as people are able to access the buy script directly.

I had a similar problem in my Bid Directory Do you have two files in your installation - buy.tpl and buy.php? Try renaming them. Of course, test if it works by bidding on your own directory (stopping at the paypal bit), and it worked for me.

 

thanks, it might help for a while, but eventually the spambots will find the new url.

sophisticated spamming software can solve most captchas
http://www.botmaster.net/pictocod/

 

I have a phpld v2+ directory, and also has the same problem. Captcha can't stop the spammers, looks like they attack the server or database via some bugs, and so bypass the captcha. I got around 400 links submitted to my directory, and around 300 of them are spammy.

 

I could be right in saying that buy.php and buy.tpl are no longer needed in later versions of phplinkbid, so you may be okay deleting them.

Please don't quote me on this though!

 

but buy.html is the page where people actually buy links..?!


added; I'm also seeing phpLinkBid 1.4.2 in my account.. where to get the v2?

 

Exactly what Mike said above. CAPTCHA MOD is optional. I use just built-in CAPTCHA on all my sites and rarely have SPAM, some people have a worse problem.

The `/content/buy.php` file is flotsam and for abckward-compatability and will be removed from the next update so feel free to delete it.

 

Mike, Most spambots can easily recognize these kind of questions:

2% is still way too much with the amount of spam Im getting on my dirs
Even After i cleaned it and added a captcha I got over a thousand links in less than a day in one dir.. probably more in others

My programmer is adding a script to delete spam links every couple hours, hope that helps.

 

damn, been there done that - see Mikey above, follow his advice and you'll be on your way

 

I just recently added a free script to delete all SPAM in one fell swoop.

http://forums.phplinkbid.com/showthread.php?t=1427

That will delete all links without bids on them. Just make sure you don't have pending links or links without bids you want to keep.

 

Great, it's helpful really.
You know, i have gotten thousands of auto spam submissions before.

 

yeah we used something similar, but customly done with a cron running every few hours.

Also you need to consider a possibility that a visitor has just submitted a link and is in process of sending paypal payment.. so if the link is deleted during that timeframe it might be a problem.. We solved it by deleting only links without bids that were old enough, like half an hour old ~ that should leave plenty of time to submit the payment.


I've been getting around 5K spam links per day on my 3 dirs, so hope that works, otherwise I'd have millions of new link in a couple months..