Preventing Forum Spam

[Michael]

Hello everyone,

I have noticed a large increase of forum spam on all of my forums and a clients forum. Has anyone got any suggestions for preventing spam.

Michael

[Scott]

Definitely make sure user email verification is turned on, and image verification is active. It would not completely eradicate the problem (it never will be); but it should vastly reduce it.

Also helps to have moderators from different global locations so that there's generally a moderator on, or close to being on, at least every 4 hours (or thereabouts) to catch anything.

[Michael]

Great advice Scott :) Will make sure to make these changes to my forums.

[Simpleminded]

There are some modifications that try to detect common patterns of posters such as multiple links in first and second posts, etc. You should look into those

[Scott]

I also received a private message regarding stopping common forum spam usernames.

http//www.stopforumspam.com/

Seems like a big list but would probably be worth the effort in the long run.

[florentin]

I visit quite a few forums on a regular basis.
I cannot think of ONE where there isn't any spamming.

Some have more than others.

Like someone above stated, you will need people watching out and letting you know right away when they see spamming.

[manojjonam10]

I think there are enough anti spamming too available for forum owners. However the spammers are evolving and they had now become tough to handle. I would like some more advanced anti spamming tool other than image verifications.

[johnmeloche]

Originally Posted by Michael

Hello everyone,

I have noticed a large increase of forum spam on all of my forums and a clients forum. Has anyone got any suggestions for preventing spam.

Michael

Hi Michael, with Forums I believe it will always be an ongoing issue. My suggestion is to always ensure you have good active moderators. If you have them assigned to specific details each with good policies, I believe it will help best in eliminating spam.

[Shannen Amber]

Hi,

You may have seen the IP lookup tool we have on our front page (if not, bookmark .wellho.net and it's the bottom right link) which I use extensively to find out a little bit more about addresses that catch my interest - be they generating unusual traffic on our web site, scouring are pages in a "very interested" way, or signing up for a forum.

[Miller Staven]

In order to do that you will need to moderate your board by yourself or having some dedicated moderators in order to delete spam threads when these appear.