Need suggestions on blocking spammers on my fourms

[zealibib slaughter]

Hey everybody,
Ive gotta forums section on my website and I am constantly having spammers register. Anyone have any suggestions on how to limit this?

This is the site http://www.greenvilleparanormal.org/forums

Its a simple machines forums hosted on a shared server with hostgator.
These are the mods installed
Social networks profile block
reCAPTCHA for SMF
Bot buster

[lisati]

Hey everybody,
Ive gotta forums section on my website and I am constantly having spammers register. Anyone have any suggestions on how to limit this?

This is the site http://www.greenvilleparanormal.org/forums

If you are hosting your forum yourself, you might want to consider installing mod_defensible (http://www.howtoforge.com/block-spammers-hackers-with-mod_defensible-on-apache2-debian-etch) on your server.

The following message is noted, with the observation that I don't use anonymising proxy - I use Squid (https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Squid) to help speed things up when I'm surfing:

Sorry, but the administrator has blocked access by proxies. Other causes of this error include using an intranet (school connections), registering on a cell phone, or using a browser that does not support compression or does not accept encoding.

[fballem]

Another option is to generate characters in an image that cannot be remotely scanned.

The user has to manually type in the characters and have them verified before the registration is accepted. No idea how difficult this is to do.

Hope this helps,

[zealibib slaughter]

My next goal is to move my site to a server which I control but unfortunately I am on a shared hosting plan through hostgator with no root shell access.

I installed the proxy blocker in hopes to stem the tide but It didn't do anything except make it impossible for me to use my phone and the site so its coming off today.

I looked at mod_defensible and liked what I saw so when I get my own server set up thats one thing I am using, thanks for the suggestion.:)

[zealibib slaughter]

Another option is to generate characters in an image that cannot be remotely scanned.

The user has to manually type in the characters and have them verified before the registration is accepted. No idea how difficult this is to do.

Hope this helps,


I've got recapatcha set up to no avail.

[Maheriano]

I run some other forums and solved this problem myself but I had FTP access to modify the files. My suggestion would be to rip out your current forums and install something like PHPBB3 so you can install any of the community plugins made specifically for this.

[zealibib slaughter]

I run some other forums and solved this problem myself but I had FTP access to modify the files. My suggestion would be to rip out your current forums and install something like PHPBB3 so you can install any of the community plugins made specifically for this.

I was considering this earlier and may do exactly that.

[Maheriano]

I was considering this earlier and may do exactly that.

I'm well adversed with PHPBB, if you have any questions you can send them my way or post them here. Another alternative is to buy vBulletin which may be easier if you're not a programmer.

[Macskeeball]

I've got recapatcha set up to no avail.

Yeah, people have figured out two ways around CAPTCHAs: (1) optical character recognition (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Optical_character_recognition) which is imperfect but can do a pretty good job and (2) copying a captcha image from a real site and displaying it on a porn site to trick a human into entering the code. So CAPTCHAs are they're less effective than some people think, but they're still annoying for users.

[zealibib slaughter]

Yeah, people have figured out two ways around CAPTCHAs: (1) optical character recognition (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Optical_character_recognition) which is imperfect but can do a pretty good job and (2) copying a captcha image from a real site and displaying it on a porn site to trick a human into entering the code. So CAPTCHAs are they're less effective than some people think, but they're still annoying for users.


I agree I hate CAPTCHAs personally but it did cut down the number of spammers registering from 100 a day to 4 a day. I want to get rid of some of the blocks I've got in place and have the forum more open, but keep the ****** ads out. (wow maybe i should add that pill for men to the censored word list in my forums.)

[catlover2]

hello, I have never set up, (or even thought about), setting up a forum, but when i registered on the dd-wrt forum, i saw an interesting way they have to stop spam.

http://www.dd-wrt.com/phpBB2/profile_sec.php?mode=register_wtf&wtf=true

[Lucradia]

Turn on COPPA if you can, as well as robots.txt

[jerenept]

You can require that the first 3 to 5 posts by a user be mod-approved.
Seems to work over on that other forum.....
foldingforum.org does this as well, I think.

[zealibib slaughter]

hello, I have never set up, (or even thought about), setting up a forum, but when i registered on the dd-wrt forum, i saw an interesting way they have to stop spam.

http://www.dd-wrt.com/phpBB2/profile_sec.php?mode=register_wtf&wtf=true

man thats cool. I never would have thought of that.

[zealibib slaughter]

thanks for all the help im gonna work on it some more in the morning.

[catlover2]

yea, i wonder how (if?) any bots get around that?