Spammers

[K7VZ]

We've had some spammers joining the forum and creating posts. I think I've identified and banned all of them.

For the time being, I've enabled the option to moderate new users. Anyone new user that requests to join, will have to be approved before they can post.

If you see or get spam, use the "Report Post" option at the bottom of each post. The symbol is in the bottom left of each post and looks like a yield sign with an exclamation mark in it.

[KC0NNT]

Virgil "The Ban Hammer" Good job!

[K7VZ]

I just found out that I was looking in the wrong spot to approve new members. Oops. Found that we had 10 new pending members and I approved 2. Yeah, that's right, 8 of them were obvious spammers. Ban, ban, ban. Oh, welcome to the 2 new members that I did approve.

[AD5VG]

Welcome to the world of internet forum administration Virgil :p

[N5MUD]

Welcome to the world of internet forum administration Virgil :p

+1. I am a moderator on a Toyota-specific 4WD forum that also runs on VBulletin, and it takes constant vigilance to keep spammers at bay.

[K7VZ]

Approved 2 new members this morning, banned 6 spammers. haha.

[K1UR]

Dealing with spammers is never ending...

I manually approved accounts on my two vBulletin sites for several years, but recently we installed software that blocks the spam instead of the spammers. With the new setup every new account gets approved (assuming they complete the email verification) but the software watches posts and if it sees a post that looks like spam it makes it private until approved by a moderator. What's really odd is that I used to delete a lot of accounts every day that were obvious spammers but with this new system the amount of actual spam that gets posted is very, very small...barely one or two messages a week.

[K7VZ]

K1UR = Banned!

Haha, just kidding. If you don't mind sharing the product you are using, I'd appreciate that. Manually approving new members is not a long term plan.

[K1UR]

We're using Typepad Antispam:

http://antispam.typepad.com/

It's free and it seems to work. We've been using it for a few months now.

[K7VZ]

Ok, I have been tweaking the registration options and I think I have most of the spammer issues fixed.

[n7kme]

Virgil "The Ban Hammer" Good job!

I suppose the inverse would be the "Ham Banner"?

[K7VZ]

Well, that didn't work. New user moderation turned back on.

[KC0NNT]

Virgil,
In the admin can you turn on "Capcha"? or see if Capcha is a plug in for the forum?

[K7VZ]

Virgil,
In the admin can you turn on "Capcha"? or see if Capcha is a plug in for the forum?

I did. I enabled the recaptcha for registration and that eliminated the gobs of spammers that were trying to join. But I still saw a few getting though even with that enabled.

[AD5VG]

I did. I enabled the recaptcha for registration and that eliminated the gobs of spammers that were trying to join. But I still saw a few getting though even with that enabled.

Yeah the captcha will take care of the bots, but if it is a persistent human then there's not much you can do except catch them when they post. I did this dance for two years on another forum and it is no fun at all...

[K7VZ]

Tired of spammers getting through. Turned on Moderate New Users option again. That way I can approve/review everyone first. I'm on here enough that it shouldn't be a huge delay for people trying to join.

[N5MUD]

What we're seeing on the Toyota forum where I'm a moderator is people from Pakistan and The Philippines registering and taking the time to fill out fake profiles that seem plausible at first glance. Many of them can write English well enough to make some kind of post. 99.7% of them are spammers. I started checking their forum signatures because most of them put spam links there, but some are getting smart enough to not do that. Some are smart enough to register, then wait 30-90 days to post any spam. I'd guess these people must be getting paid some pittance to do this.

[K7VZ]

I don't understand why, but the big give-a-way is they enter "Man" under our category Vehicle Make. WTF? Banned. haha. The spammers that are getting through (until I catch them) is a real person behind it because they are passing the captcha authentication and using a real email address to validate. I need to do some further research on the IP addresses they are coming from and might be able to block them through that method. BUT, for example, if they are from Pakistan, I want to be careful not to block our legitimate members from there.

[N5MUD]

...BUT, for example, if they are from Pakistan, I want to be careful not to block our legitimate members from there.

Yeah, that is a valid concern for this forum, since it is an international hobby. For the record, I have friends from the Indian sub-continent and bear no one any ill-will just for being from there, but statistically it's true (on my other forum) that the majority of spammers happen to come from those two places (Pakistan and The Philippines). We get some from China, India, former Soviet republics, and the U.S. of A. too.

[K7VZ]

Installed a plugin that should detect and kill the bot registrations. We've been getting hit hard with them over the last few weeks.

[K7VZ]

No wonder why things went crazy over the last few weeks. My plugin in the post above was catching most of them, but I was still getting approximately 5 per day. --> http://www.vbulletin.com/forum/showthread.php/370694-Increased-Spamming-Attempts-and-Ways-to-Combat-It

Changed the registration verification to Question and Answer instead of reCaptcha.

[K7VZ]

So spammers are still finding a way to get through. I noticed one got through today and the current activity was "Sending Private Message". I'm probably going to implement that new users cannot PM unless they have 3 or 5 posts in the forum. I've also turned on moderate new users, so they will require one of us to approve them before being able to post/join.

Let me know if anyone sees abnormal activity from new users and I'll do what I can to squash them.

[KC0NNT]

Anyone need any Viagra? Hit me up!