spam in the forums

[michiel]

it's getting a bit silly how much spam there is in the forums, so for now, we are going to disallow bbcode and HTML, in the hope that the forums are less attractive to spammers. Sorry to all the regular users, as you will have to cut and paste URLs to link to places.

[mishalon]

The matter is that if you install spam protection from public sources, even if it is the last version, spam robots will soon start to process it because they are taught to process spam only in the case if it is installed in thousands of forums, because it is not reasonable to teach the program if it is installed only in one of the forums.

My idea of getting rid of spam and spam robots is like this:
if, when you register, you see a non-standard captcha, but a sigh like this "Enter the name of the forum where you waant to register" and and the field tor the answer, if you enter "PHPLIST" or "phplist", then you are allowed to register. Believe me, after that not a single robot will be able to register in your forum. I think that on PHP this engine can be quickly written.

[DeweyW]

Block all logins from China and Russia. That took care of 95% of all my spam.

[Denver Dave]

By all means, try blocking by country if you think it will work. I gave up on my forums and had to go to people personally calling me to get on.

One idea I've seen is to have administrator approval with a field where the subscriber says a few words about them self and why they wish to be in the forum.

Good luck !!

[Hernol]

We can't just block China, that will be unfair for some people.
We are looking now to phpbb3, which although it's in dev state right now, we are going to give it a try. The akward thing is that they've changed all their templating system, so we have to do all templates again... That's not very nice

[Denver Dave]

How will phpbb3 help?

[WinstonN]

would it be possible to put a capcha right at the end of the forum page, just before you click submit?
this should minimize spam right?
I am willing to help out if you guys need it?

Or is the spam a hack that they just inject the code via sql?
if it is, maybe a hack to call a .htaccess in the admin page?
I think you guys have tried it before but it didnt work out, so I might be able to help,

let me know so we can close the book on these bitches,

wins

[pmacneill]

Hi,

Just tried to post with and without a URL in the message. Each time I would be presented with the warning that I could not post a URL until I have met either criteria (10 posts, or 7 days). Even when I removed the URL completely - I still couldn't post.

Any ideas?

[Dragonrider]

Hi,

Just tried to post with and without a URL in the message. Each time I would be presented with the warning that I could not post a URL until I have met either criteria (10 posts, or 7 days). Even when I removed the URL completely - I still couldn't post.

Any ideas?

Try ticking the "Disable HTML in this post" box on the left of the entry text area.

[JamieFree]

I would leave the html and bbc off till people who arent here to educate themselves stop visiting.

[annanaras]

I would have to agree..all these spammers are actually affecting people who are sincere enough to register here! I'm totally fine the new rules, I think it would stop the spammers for a good while!