Can't we stop the spam?

Lately this forum has been inundated with spammers. I'm very active in about 8 online forums, and this one is by far the worst for spam. I don't look at my "new posts" to have them all filled with how I can "purchase cheap iPhone Samsung true religion lowest cost beneficial quality" and no less than 6 threads about eggplant....

Whats the issue here? We need some better measures for people who sign up as new users.

The main problem is that a lot of the spammers get banned but the content of the post are still up. So only thing banning them does it prevents them from making more thread/post but leaves their adds. And of course im sure some dumbass here likes clicking on their links.

The mods need to ban and edit their posts at least to remove all content or just delete the damn thing. i went back and forth awhile back on this and lately I haven't even been reporting them due to the above. its kind of pointless to just ban and not do anything about the content.

Believe me, we need some better protection against spam.
Also, please report them if you see them. I always remove the threads/posts that I can, but I only have jurisdiction in certain forums, so I cannot delete them all.
Reporting will send me an email, but i'm not always online here to watch everything, and that helps.
Also, the worst ones in the last few days get 15 posts in all over the place, so it its hard to cleanup.

Rockin03mp5 said:

Believe me, we need some better protection against spam.
Also, please report them if you see them. I always remove the threads/posts that I can, but I only have jurisdiction in certain forums, so I cannot delete them all.
Reporting will send me an email, but i'm not always online here to watch everything, and that helps.
Also, the worst ones in the last few days get 15 posts in all over the place, so it its hard to cleanup.

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Thats understandable but really all mods SHOULD be able to edit post all over IDEALLY but thats not the case here. I used to report spammers and state to delete the bleeping post and not just ban them and have gone a few rounds with a few mods before on this subject. Eventually you just get to the points of thinking whatever... To bad you guys dont have ability to delete a spammers profile and auto deletes all his post.

Deleting posts and banning people is solving the symptom, not the problem. Why is it SO easy for spammers to create an account? Lots of other forums I'm on limit abilities to post in certain forums within the first month or so, until you've established yourself as a true user.

Yeah, we need that for sure.

Its ben a long time since i last created an account but do we have a capcha(no idea on the correct spelling) in place along with email verification required?

I think that's in place, problem is the "bots" often have human users who sign them up to a forum, then run their macros and the "bots" will go on a post frenzy.

Maxx Mazda said:

I think that's in place, problem is the "bots" often have human users who sign them up to a forum, then run their macros and the "bots" will go on a post frenzy.

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Some forums have it in place where you can't create a new thread unless you have XX number of post but that wont stop them from posting in a thread. And making a member wait XX amount of days before they can post isnt really fair I don't think. Thats because most people who join are wanting to find a solution to a problem they are having.

One thing that can be implimented is to make the user enter a capcha for every post tell they have XX number of post and limit them to say X number of post a day for X amount of days. Now if tha is easly done is another story.

Thats a good idea actually. Can Antoine chime in on this?

I'll let him know of the idea.

Not sure how easy these things are to set up in vbulletin.

Spammers went on a rampage last week, I came across multiple reports from other forum-based site owners experiencing the same thing...I've also been updating myself on the latest spam prevention methods and I have made a change to our own spam prevention method...Q&A. I've replaced all the old questions with new more obscure questions which are also more difficult to answer. As of this post...It seems to be helping!

There are a variety of Anti-Spam plugins and techniques but there is also a fine line between...Making your forum so secure it becomes a pain to post and discouraging spammers from joining your Community. While I appreciate and encourage feedback, I'm still not a fan of delaying the ability to post for new Members...I see it has a major turn-off and a good way to reduce activity levels over the long-term.

As for cleaning up existing spam, we have multiple systems in place that have been working well...Our Moderator Team does a great job with reporting and removing spam but obviously they can't catch everything...I personally clear out all the reported spam at the end of each week in addition to removing spam whenever I see it. Up until last week, we hadn't had a major spam attack in years...Last week was very unusual. Once again...Please report spam when you see it, either by using the report function or by PMing Moderators and or myself!

Besides the delaying the ability to post technique...I would like to know about other ideas...What seems to work well for people active on other forum-based sites?

Thanks for the feedback!