Problem with forum spam

[optimalwebsite]

I'm not an expert when it comes to forums, but one I visit and sometimes help out is suffering horribly from spam... It's run in phpBB like this one. The moderators are having a real hard time keeping on top of it. What's the best work around?

The spam posts are links advertising porno pics/vids.

Any help much appreciated.

Kind regards,


Joel

[amazonian]

My WordPress blog has been inundated with pharmaceutical spam for several days now. As far as I've gotten in their forum is to read about installing some utilities to stop it. Turning off the ability of the public to comment has not stopped the drug scams.

So, I'm eager to read people's answers to you. My suspicion is that these spammers are pretty smart and we just might have to keep jumping.

Each security measure inspires another wave of breaches!

[PilotPete]

I have forums on 2 sites and have been getting the same spam. To partly solve it I have turned on the higher security levels requesting an email confirmation as they mostly offer bogus email addresses so they bounce and also taken to banning some of the IPs when they seem to repeat.

Apart from that I am looking out for a volunteer Venezuelan Hit Squad to take a more serious line of action.

[RollerBall]

Check out the many sites where forum owners share spammers' details. Then ban all of the email domains on those lists that they use to register with (it's a waste of time banning individual email addresses). You MUST have a system in place that emails passwords to new members and in tandem you have to constantly monitor new joiners so you can hopefully intercept them before they have a chance to post. They usually stick out like a sore thumb - if in doubt just google their email address and/or user name and if they show at all delete them immediately.

Bad luck for you if you have a HUGE number of new members joining. I don't so I can handle them and I have no problem thus far.

BTW I don't know what facilities PHPBB offers - I'm a fan of YaBB myself.

[optimalwebsite]

It's a real pain. I suggested somehow inserting the "no follow" into the page, as it seems the spam intended to act as optimisation. Maybe advertising this on the homepage would prevent the users spamming....

[Refiner]

I have some questions for you to answer for yourself on this...

Do you allow anonymous posting? if so, disable it.

Do you have the security graphic on at registration? if not, you will probably want to enable it.

You may also want to set a short time limit on sessions and require security graphic confirmation on every log in, though your members will probably grumble over this change.

I had to completely change my phpBB board to admin approval only as securing the forums to member only posting, posting a global announcement warning spammers, banning IPs, spamming accounts, and bogus mail "accounts" (more like domains) just was not enough. Since the forum is a small forum for students, yet welcome to legit members from outside academia, this is not an issue for this board. However, I would not be able to do the same with my other CMSs that use the phpBB Forum.

The best you can do for now is to tighten your security as much as you can and hope they have fixed all these issues when phpBB3 is finally released.

[kgun]

Google search:

forum spam site:www.webproworld.com

The first hit is this post:

Question about dealing with forum spam

If you need additional information, here is a 33 pages long thread from phpBB that started on Thu Jan 20, 2005 and has the last post on Thu Apr 12, 2007

Fight the spam registration bots!