comment spammers

[glenngds2007]

they are no fun at all for a new forum trying to get a start. I am the web master and administrator for a forum trying to get a start. Recently they attacked like a pack of wolves on my new forum. They discovered that my forum was set up where the user could activate theirselves by clicking a link in a email my forum would happily send them. In three days I had hundreds of new members all of which were comment spammers. My forum went from a few pages of a few posts to thousands of pages of new posts of which 99.99% were spam. I immediately shut down the forum after I discovered some of those spammers were uploading lots of porn spam. It took days to get it all straightened out. I deleted entire directories and databases off of the server.

Now all new members have to activated by the administrator. Hopefully no more comment and porn spammers will leave any more of the junk they were leaving.):P

[blastus]

That's brutal man.

[Tamlynmac]

Big surprise.

Given the opportunity a segment of society will exploit ANYTHING. Especially , if there's a profit to made.There exists those who would profit even at the cost of their own morality and integrity. As you indicate, it is frustrating and often times down right depressing.

I am sympathetic to your cause, but doubt you will resolve the issue completely.

Good Luck

[Skripka]

People suck, at times.

[yabbadabbadont]

People suck, at times.

I thought that those were the links he removed...

:twisted:

[Kareeser]

If you're using phpBB, try "Textual Confirmation".

[HittingSmoke]

If you're using phpBB, try "Textual Confirmation".

Yea, most PHP based web forums have a CAPTHCHA option.

[handy]

I thought that those were the links he removed...

:twisted:

:lolflag:

Damn, I got there too late!

Better than coming early I suppose.

[Sporkman]

Better than coming early I suppose.

Just think about baseball.

[Keyper7]

In the evolutionary race between spammers and anti-spam measures, the real users lose.

Either by reading spam or by having to bear with annoying procedures to register.

Sad, sad, sad.

[donkyhotay]

Until they make spam a death penalty offense it's just something we're all going to have to deal with.

[Tristam Green]

they are no fun at all for a new forum trying to get a start. I am the web master and administrator for a forum trying to get a start. Recently they attacked like a pack of wolves on my new forum. They discovered that my forum was set up where the user could activate theirselves by clicking a link in a email my forum would happily send them. In three days I had hundreds of new members all of which were comment spammers. My forum went from a few pages of a few posts to thousands of pages of new posts of which 99.99% were spam. I immediately shut down the forum after I discovered some of those spammers were uploading lots of porn spam. It took days to get it all straightened out. I deleted entire directories and databases off of the server.

Now all new members have to activated by the administrator. Hopefully no more comment and porn spammers will leave any more of the junk they were leaving.):P

In reality, I think it would have been good to err on the side of caution and, in anticipation of spam (which is why certain spiders exist), make the "administrator authorization" default from the get-go. I've done it on the forums I've set up, and while spam still exists, it has never made it into my forums in that amount in such a short time.

I feel for you :)

[glenngds2007]

Thanks for all the support, everybody

[Bios Element]

Yeah, You want http://recaptcha.net/ . Enjoy :)

[wmcbrine]

People suck, at times.Spammers don't count as people.

[Greg]

In addition to reCATCHPA, email verification helps a lot. In addition to that, depending on what board software you use, there are modifications that help prevent spam by looking for certain keywords in new users' posts.

[jespdj]

But don't rely on only a CAPTCHA, because most CAPTCHA mechanisms can be broken too. Read this story (http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/archives/001001.html), for example - there are guys who sell CAPTCHA-breaking programs for money.

And even if you use a CAPTCHA which is hard to break automatically, it will be cracked. People for example use your CAPTCHA on their own website (by showing the CAPTCHA of your website in a frame) by using other people: "Just solve this to see a sexy picture!"... :roll:

[glenngds2007]

What I am doing is that I check all inactive users to see their email address and IP address. I do two things things with the info, run it through google to see if there has been any complaints about that email or IP related to spam or porn, I run it through Whois to see what company/country/organization owns the IP. Also no more uploading of almost everything, with the exception of avatars, even that could allow someone to upload a porn picture as a avatar, but at least it would be very small 90px X 90px or smaller and easy to get rid of. What happened was that some of the porn was coming from organizations devoted to spreading porn. What they did not realize was that I was in jeopardy of having my site turned off by my web hosting company, because they have a zero tolerance policy when it comes to porn. Luckily I discovered it before someone at my web hosting did. It would have made me really mad to have my site turned off by my web hosting company.