I am getting too much spam

Hi,

I had same problems with people from 2 countries Senegal and Côte d'Ivoire. It is not on my forum but on my main site. I had no choice other than blocking the country ip range from my hosting admin panel.

If you record all users ip and check it, More likely you will find most of the spam is comming from one or two countries. The worst case scenario, Check and see whether you get any real visitors from these countries If not block the country range ip from your hosting admin panel.

So far so good. It works for me.

Good Luck

 

Mybb doesn't have the spam problems associated with BOTH VB and phpbb. Bot programmer haven't bothered to incorporate the mybb system into their captcha breaking routines.

Captcha is broken and hacked by spammers for VB, Phpbb, IPB and SMF.

Banning emails is useless. Banning IPs is useless too. Both of those are in endless supply to spammers. Ban an IP or Email and they just another one.

 

RectangleMan, I don't agree with you whilst MyBB may have a very small amount of spam issues it will in the near future, you have my word on that.

vB 3.7.0 will be released in a couple of days, and they've made a CAPTCHA system that allows you as an administrator to modify and make custom CAPTCHA fields (Q&A fields) which are unbreakable. As you are allowed to make your own custom questions, and the only way to bypass this would be to do it the manual way.

Regards,
Meti

 

Okay, guys, I checked MyBB's website and i think they are better than phpbb because the human question and other stuff..should i change to MyBB ? has anyone use it before>

 

I've used it in my past and it's basically a mix of vB/IPB, however I believe there are lack of mods and templates, one of the reason I converted my old board to phpBB and then to vB.

Regards,
Meti

 

I think you should stay on phpBB, and the reason is.. There are lot of mods in phpbb which can be available from lot of websites or directly from phpbb. Secondly its FREE. considering other boards like myBB, punBB, SMF .. i don't like them, because they have few amount of mods, not a good ACP etc etc..

If your forum is big, and making healthy cash switch your forum to vBulletin or IPB if you can afford this

This is what i want to say, And btw P.Dude, Did you try my method which i posted above ?

- Imran

 

I agree with funforums, there's a huge amount of mods/templates available for phpBB, one of the reasons why it still is the best free platform. However, I manage vB forums but phpBB is definitely my 2nd choice.

Regards,
Meti

 

i tried the way you suggessted, but spammers have alot more domains and even some of them use hotmail... so it kind of not possible to block every single domain!! even though i delete the spammer profiles but they register again the next day with a new spam post!

IPB and Vbulleton are probably the best but i am not going for them yet..

myBB is not quite famous and yea they don't have lots of mods but still there is nothing wrong in trying them out...

 

Well, I don't think bot comes from hotmail account, I am sure about this, I am running a forum and i have little experience about this. I can give you the list of email Ids (spamming ids) but adding them individually will take ages, There is a mod on IPB you can install it easily and can get rid of spamming daily

Converting the boards again and again may cause problem for you and you will get less visitors/members, Because when you convert to any forum your members have to refresh the password or something like that, Anyway best of luck from me

- Imran

 

I agree with Imran, converting your board from phpBB to myBB is not possible unless you do a fresh install however you may hire a coder to do this for you, and should probably charge around 30-50$ for this, depending on the size of the forums.

Now the question would be, why not try and save another 50$ and try to get a owned vB license here at DP? I'm certain you would find someone.

Regards,
Meti

 

Offcourse i am goona do a fresh install.. becoz i don't want those spammers to be in my new forum!!

Thanks guys for your answers!

 

switch to vbulletin

 

Yes, I agree with the suggestions to use mods which ask human-answerable questions. The question on my site at signup is simply, "Please type the word EAST here" - it is enough to deter 99% of bots - in fact I haven't had a single bot signup in the month since I added this! Although the more popular your site becomes, the more human spammers you will get, I imagine...

I wouldn't bother with the visual identification - i.e. the CAPTCHA. The default phpbb captcha has been completely compromised and all the bots can crack it. You are only adding an extra obstacle to your potential legitimate members. Just use a mod like RAC, turn off the captcha authorisation and most of your problems will be solved. Now all you have to do is get more real members

 

Yeah I completly agree with markowe, disable the CAPTCHA (Image verification) system if you already use that human verification field.

- Meti

 

Get some moderators.

 

but still spammers will keep registering and that won't help alot!

 

I don't neccessarily agree, though moderators can keep the forum top quality, they still would have lots of spam issues to deal with and the best solution is to stop spam.

- Meti

 

some times even this does not works. i used al these added lots of hacks even then i am getting tons of spam. i am really feed up. But recently not sure how my spam rate is 0 yes no spam post. Dont know what changes i made in admin.

 

We all have to understand that their technique is very powerful and advanced on a daily rate, only way to improve the spam protection is to enable custom question and answer fields.

- Meti

 

I have done a lot of work with phpbb and there are many ways to stop spam. SMF is easy to spam. I used to run with SMF but never again. Mod problems etc and spam!