how do i stop spammers comign on my forum

i have a captcha installed when you register on my forum.. but there is still spamming registering going on... there usernames are not even readable. and the emails they use are like hsdisji@ wut ever......

how do i stop this?

also in their sigs... they have tons of links... sometimes porn and weird symbols.

im running smf.

 

whet version are you using ?

Some extra things that i have found help, working down the list depending on how bad spam is.

enable email verify for new sign-up's

add a question to the sign up page such as
is the sun is green, yellow or blue?

make a new group for users with less than 20 posts and disable sig file for that group.

Make it so users with zero posts can only post an introduction in a designated sub forum before they can post in the other sub forums.

if you have a lot of spam try http://www.simplemachines.org/community/index.php?topic=283309.0

have more active moderators

 

Update your captcha or add an additional question.

 

this is a lot of help! thanks..

i did the activation through email thing when you register, i tested it out two times and i got this message:

Please try again. If you come back to this error screen, report the error to an administrator.

it registers them and the activation is in your email, but you get that message after every registration... im running version 1.1.10

 

I think you need to contact your hosting provider to look into this for you.

 

Most captchas are readable by bots. A better idea would be to check for the presence of javascript being turned on and make it a requirement for your site. Bots can't deal with javascript.

What software are you running for the forum?

 

what do u mean software.. like forum version?

if anybody can fix this.. I AM PAYING VIA PAYPAL!

 

quickest way to get it fixed would be to ask on SMF's own support forums
http://www.simplemachines.org/community/index.php?board=11.0

give them the following information.

what fault is happening, and what you do that causes the error to show.
forum version number
any thing that shows in the error logs page in the forum admin section at the time the error happens.

Usually you will get help reasonably quickly and FREE as long as you give them the above information.

 

You need a different captcha, SMF may have a recaptcha plugin? If all else doesn't work, you can still ban all email address from russia, etc..

 

Use recaptcha plugin of SMF and make sure that you have set "User activation" in your setting. So that users require to click on activation link.

 

i trired setting to user activation but it gives a error.

 

Use recaptcha thats the best way out

 

If you don't tell us what the exact error message was, there is no way we can help you.

 

Yes use recaptcha. Its easy to setup. Its free. And it works.

 

i do have captcha on registration..... and it says this when the activate emailo is working..

Please try again. If you come back to this error screen, report the error to an administrator.

you get that message when you submit your registration ^

 

Yes you have said that before, BUT what shows in the error logs in the SMF forum admin panel for that time? ... it will give more details, like a line number or file name etc.

 

can we talk over any messenger? ill pm u.. let u log in

 

does anybody know how to add a secret question to the registration field?..

if i want to ask a security question...

how do i do this?

 

Search google: http://www.google.com/search?q=smf anti spam random question&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8

 

Folks, reCaptcha has been shown to be readable.

Banning countries doesn't work as they'll just come around via a hacked server somewhere else or a botnet.

Security questions are readable as well. They just subcontract them out to the same place where articles get written for a buck.