Forum Spam - How Do You Deal With It?

Our forum is new, about six months or so old and we have not run a forum before so I am new to managing forums.

The biggest problem our forum is facing is spam, I do not know how all the spammers in the world have found us but they have. So my question is: How do I stop them? I know that realistically I can not stop them but there must be some ways to eliminate forum spam.

So far I have been banning all the spam IP addresses. It seems to have NO effect what so ever so I have stopped banning IP addresses.

I did also ban lot of emails that where exclusively used for spamming purposes but they all just switched to Goole mail, yahoo, msn and so on so I have stopped doing that as well.

I am just wondering how other forum owners deal wit the spam issue. Do you actually ban the spammers or you just delete them. Do you Google each and every email aadress and IP address or you just delete or ban them if email looks really strange.

What measures I should take to eliminate forum spam?

 

You need to stop bots from registration. I recommend you to try reCaptcha instead of vB's default image verification, or question and answer verification. It's a great idea to try them both.

On HealthForums.org I have reCaptcha enabled and it's doing pretty good, although the forum is near one month old.

There will always be a portion of spam, but you can reduce it to minimum.

 

You can also get more moderators to delete posts.

 

some forum packages offer anti spam measures. Akismet, by Wordpress is used in SMF forums and works nicely. it'll flag suspicious messages until reviewed by a moderator or admin.

 

Lot of great advice, thanks. I was using a default image verification and I think that was one of the reasons how I got lot of automated signups. I did not even realise that vBulletin has reCaptcha and question and answer verification built in already so I did change it to reCapcha now. As our forum is not very busy yet than I can manage the moderation on my own at the moment and I have set it so that I have to approve all the post before they go live.

 

Is there a "Stop Forum Spam" modification for your forum - http://www.stopforumspam.com/

If so, get it installed and you will join an army of admins that work together to stop forum spam. Lets say that you have the mod installed. A spammer joins my forum, and I add them to the stop forum spam site. When they go to register on your site, the spammer will be blocked.

Between recaptcha and the stop forum spam modification, my spam problem has been cut by about 99.99%

 

Also I think there is a way to stop spam by establishing a good list of words that are blacklisted

 

recaptcha and taking the time to report forum spam to sponsors. I've sent literally hundreds of spam complaints to sponsors over the last year. Sometimes I can get a spammers account terminated. If they don't get their commissions then I have wasted their time and money.

 

recaptcha and module for spamming, that will be enough I think, I had the same problems, and I will not advertise my site now like others hehehe

 

captcha works great. but that wont stop the bots only. you have to ban spammers that uses manual process.

 

I chanced upon a spam mod on the .org the other day and I cant believe the difference it has already made.
Rather than banning ip addresses. This one is a it different in the way you set some countries ips to be able to register and post, others as soon as they register, go into moderated users. That way you can see a post or two to see if they are genuine users.
http://www.vbulletin.org/forum/showthread.php?t=205044&page=4

One of the best spam tools I have found and used so far. It takes minutes to install and set up as well.

 

Make sure you use the Image Verification on registration thing. Also, you must remove the spam messages before your users see them, cause it makes a bad impression, specially if it's his first time.

You can also think of having image verification for posting new thread/post.

 

Yes, captcha indeed works very well, I have not had any spam sign ups for a week now and I was getting average of 20 to 50 a day.

 

reCAPTCHA and nofollow attribute.

That would kill your forum.

If you use Invision Power Board, they have a free spam service.
http://community.invisionpower.com/topic/288800-introducing-spam-monitoring-service/

 

This is a good way to slow down the posting on your forum - especially if its a new site. I have seen forums that use image verification when posting a new thread. And guess what, those sites are dead with no new post or threads.

 

An update on my own trials with the VB add on I mentioned above. 100% success rate so far. IMO if like me you run a target audience forum, it is spot on. Anyone else, if they are genuine will post and wait for the posts to be moderated. Not one has got past it yet.

 

Forum spam usually need more than ON strategy. Try this list:
http://www.forumdr.com/dealing-with-vbulletin-spam/748/

 

from my point of view, the best way might be add some limitations to post.
It works well for me, though I still got 5 or so new spamers regged a day. When they post spams, I will froze their accounts, and delete them later.
(I'm also new to manage forum)

 

Check out the fassim.com plugin. Also, if you need help removing spam contact me.

-Kevin

 

Do not just delete a user also banner there IP after someones IP is banned 2 or 3 times that person will never come back. Alot of forum admins think deleting truble makers is enough well it is not you also have to bann there IP