[How To] Reduce spam on your forum

We had a big spam problem here on vBFAQ, as well as on some of my other forums. We would ban the spammers and delete their posts - but they would just come back again and again.

Really - we were mostly dealing with BOTs - automated scripts that would register on our forum and spam post once or twice and then be gone. After alot of trial and error, I have come up with the way to minimize the spam on my forums.

Follow these steps below, and you should be able to dramatically reduce the spam on your forum also.


STEP ONE
Ban some email addresses. See this thread: Spam Email addresses to Ban (http://www.vbulletin-faq.com/forum/showthread.php?t=6144)


These are some of the most common spammers. Not all of them by far, but its some of the main ones used by spammers. To ban these email addresses, go to your ADMIN CP > vBULLETIN OPTIONS > USER BANNING OPTIONS > Banned Email AddressesNote that partial email addresses are matched from the end of the address unless you enable "Aggressive Email Banning" below. Therefore if you ban @example.com you will ban user@example.com, but if you ban @example that user will not be banned. If you enable "Aggressive Email Banning", user@example.com would be banned by @example.If the email address of a user attempting to register or change their email address matches any of the addresses you specify here will see a no-permission error. For example, if you have banned 'example.com' then a user attempting to use 'someone@example.com' will be rejected.
STEP TWO

Install the hack NoSpam! - an alternative to CAPTCHA images (http://www.vbulletin.org/forum/showthread.php?t=124828)

This simple hack is meant as a replacement for the default CAPTCHA system in vBulletin. What does this hack do ? As part of the registration process, it asks a question. Any question you want. That's the best part: YOU make up the questions, which means that every forum is unique, which means that it is impossible for spambots to be simply programmed to bypass it at all forums with the hack installed.

STEP THREE
For the occasional spam posters that get through the above hack, install this second Hack to Prevent Spam (http://www.vbulletin-faq.com/forum/showthread.php?t=5215). This hack is misnamed a bit. It doesnt actually prevent spam, it prevents your members from seeing it. This hack automatically scans new posts from new members for common spam keywords. If any are found, the post/thread will be sent to the moderation queue to prevent their spam from having any affect.

I also recommend you install the hack QUICK MODERATION: Moderation queue info on Forums (http://www.vbulletin.org/forum/showthread.php?t=92809). The reason for this is that with the Hack to Prevent Spam I mentioned above, some moderated posts may be missed by your moderators because a moderated post isn't very obvious. This hack places a small bar just below the navbar that only your staff can see, which alerts your staff that a thread, or post, needs to be moderated. This way, they dont get missed. This is important because you dont want new members' posts to get lost in the moderation queue.

These three easy steps can almost eliminate spam from your forum, and make even less spam viewable to your members. I cannot stress enough that you do all three steps.

Great guide; great information. Thank you very much for this! :)
Keep up the great work. With information like this, your forum will definately hit off!

Sending posts for users with less than three posts to the moderation queue when they include a link seems to do the trick. I don't think this helps a forum "talke off", but it certainly helps an established forum stay "spam free".

-Raymond

Sending posts for users with less than three posts to the moderation queue when they include a link seems to do the trick. I don't think this helps a forum "talke off", but it certainly helps an established forum stay "spam free".

-Raymond


Yes - but stopping them before the bots register keeps you in good with your moderators - who nag me to do something baout the spam almost daily...

Sending posts for users with less than three posts to the moderation queue when they include a link seems to do the trick. I don't think this helps a forum "talke off", but it certainly helps an established forum stay "spam free".

-Raymond


Also a new forum starting out shouldn't be worried about spam. This is for forums that are getting tons of spam on it. I haven't seen to many new forums getting spammed allot.

Excellent tutorial!

Awesome! Thanks a bunch! I like this place!!

I should have known this forum has the answers. Thanks, Peggy!

We try.. :)

Of course we do! Now tell everyone at that other site, lol :yes:

I should do it in the thread I started on the original vbulletin forums and tell them "Thanks for nothing, I found my answer HERE". I will if they keep on stalling ... ;)

Yep, it's an old thread, but the subject is long from dead. New ideas and software are becoming available as we continue to fight this battle.

One such peice of software available is GeoIP. There are several coding APIs available for several languages as well as an Apache Module to fight spam and content harvesting on your forum.

Block traffic from countries you don't need to do business from or the countries of origin spamming your forum.

This is not an email solution, but spam assassin and thers are available for that.

Read more on getting Help Stopping Content Harvesting and Spam (http://www.cpurigs.com/forums/showthread.php?t=4189).

There seems to be a new competition on who can spam the most, as evidenced on my designs forum overnight. :mad:

I hadn't replaced all of these spam preventions since upgrading to 3.7
Time to do so!

I've seen a lot more spam lately. There was something with PM spam jumping around several forums i have a web of links between. they are also getting smarter and seem to be blowing past easy nospam questions such as what is 2+5?

-Raymond

Yep. The spam question thing stopped working for me, as far as spam is concerned, long ago. I'm having to get really aggressive now.

Change the 2 + 5 to 2 + 6 - a small change like that is surprisingly effective!

great topic Thanks you

No spam and no bots using Stop the registration bots (http://www.vbulletin.org/forum/showthread.php?t=183917). It's great. :)

Possibly in the realm of dumb questions, but to save some pain for me at least ;) :
Would we need to uninstall Isbot to install your mod, noppid?

It replaces IsBot. I saw people posting that IsBot was beaten and wrote my own.

I get that, but when it comes to spam bots I like having multiple hurdles for them to jump and your mod tackles the problem in a different way. Would the two mods clash?

It deals with the time just like IsBot and it goes further to include hidden form elements that are unique to your site.

IsBot is beat because they pass the time stamp in the URL and tell the spammer what to beat. We save the time privately so they don't know what to manipulate with the time. The added form elements make it a manual effort to beat the form thus rendering the automation process useless.

I'm not going to talk into switching. But IsBot is beat.

Thanks, noppid. That clears things up for me.