[neelmani]

Hi All,

I just installed VB 4.1.4 and imported data from phpBB3. I moved to vBulletin thinking it will be better in fighting spam.. as I was really struggling to do that in phpbb3 but I am having really hard time in fighting spam....

1. I have activated email verification
2. Installled vStopForumSpam mod... (That has helped a little)

but now spammers are able to post as guests and I have no way of stopping them.. I have checked all forum permission and guests are not allowed to post...

I tried myself doing that but I was not successful... it asks me to activate my account...

I am totally lost... any help will be really appreciated...

[jkcerda]

change registration to question/answer format, that should stop over 90% of spammers, no idea on the rest.

[Videx]

Verify in AdminCP>Usergroup Manager>Unregistered/Not logged in>edit usergroup>Post / Thread Permissions all are set to no?

Agree Q&A will eliminate bots, but if your site is popular humans will still get through. If you site is local, consider using cpanel to block large parts of the planet.

[WERTZtilitHURTZ]

I agree with the Q & A. That helped me quite a bit.

[Crotan]

You need this mod!

http://www.vbulletin.org/forum/showthread.php?t=248042

Seconded Q & A, now that ReCAPTCHA is basically useless in stopping spam bots, it's your best bet

[MaryTheG(r)eek]

Originally Posted by Crotan

.....now that ReCAPTCHA is basically useless in stopping spam bots

It's not only that reCAPTCHA hacked. The problem is that they changed the fonts, so now one words appears with a big shadow, something that made even human to be unable to read them. In my honors word, 2 days ago I had to click refresh more than 20 times till to get a word that was somehow easy to read.

I'm using Akismet in combination with StopForumSpam and the native vB Captcha and I've none spam registration. Also try to find a hack here which prohibites users to post links in their xxx first posts.

Maria

[vbresults]

Try out the mod in my sig (making sure to delete all current spammers first). It will solve your problems.

[Crotan]

Originally Posted by MaryTheG(r)eek

Also try to find a hack here which prohibites users to post links in their xxx first posts.

Maria

Spam-O-Matic does this already. Look under "Auto-Moderation: URL Count"

[MaryTheG(r)eek]

Originally Posted by Crotan

Spam-O-Matic does this already. Look under "Auto-Moderation: URL Count"

Yes, I think that this is the one that I meant. Just didn't remembered the name.

[Videx]

Of course, this too won't stop the human spammers. And it is really tricky on a forum where you're trying to increase traffic, to have to decide if some of their posts is spam and delete them. Apparently they're just trying to build up x posts so they can post a link??? Makes little sense since they must know as soon as they post the link we'll know they're spammers.

I'm beginning to suspect they must get paid pennies to post regardless if it has links. Or they're just damned dedicated!


An example post from last week in a thread "most popular domains" (I didn't delete it or her. Yet.):

I am here in this Internet marketing field for more than 2 years. I did visit lot of sites with the domain name extension, .com, .net and got links so many times. Next to these domain name extension, i didn't expect that .jp will take the 3rd place with 5.4 billion pages. Really a surprise!!

[HMBeaty]

Originally Posted by Crotan

Spam-O-Matic does this already. Look under "Auto-Moderation: URL Count"

I also created a modification which does this if users don't have the spam-o-matic installed.

But yes, Q&A are effective unless you use some that have simple answers such as "What's 1 + 1?". Also, make a minimum of 5 Q&A (so they're rotating randomly).