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Spam users

Started by Moo, October 06, 2010, 12:30:57 PM

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Moo

Almost all the users registered on this forum are spam. >:(
The existing captcha is obviously not enough to keep bots out, so could you perhaps install an additional one? Perhaps one of those where you need to answer a question?
Then all the spam users could be deleted, and we'd be back to having 50 users or so rather than 650...

Stephen

Can anybody recommend a good captcha for SMF? Preferably one that is easy to install :)

At least we don't get any spam posts any more...

Moo

http://custom.simplemachines.org/mods/index.php?mod=1516 looks like the kind of thing I was thinking of. It's an implementation for 1.1.7 of a feature that is in 2.0, so you would need to update to 1.1.7 to use the mod. It might be simpler to just go straight to 2.0 and use the inbuilt version there.

http://custom.simplemachines.org/mods/index.php?mod=1547 looks like a good way of identifying existing spammers for deletion, but it looks like it just requires confirmation for them when they register instead of blocking them altogether...

Stephen

OK, I think I will try upgrading to SMF 2.0.

Meanwhile, I have deleted all users who have never logged in and never posted. I also deleted users who haven't completed their email activation for longer than a month. (I hope this didn't delete any legitimate accounts by mistake... if anyone finds they can't login, just drop me an email and I'll fix it.)

This only got rid of a minority of the spam accounts, unfortunately. The "Stop Spammer" mod you mentioned might help in identifying the rest - perhaps we should give that a go after I've upgraded to 2.0.

Moo

You could delete all users who have a URL set in their profile and who have never posted.
You could even go as far as deleting everyone who has never posted. As you only need to register if you want to post (or send PM I guess), anyone else who registered is probably just spam.
Good luck with the upgrade  :)

Moo


Stephen

Doh!!

I think my next step will be to look for more anti spam plugins or similar things. A quick google for "spam forum users" showed that there are a few plugins available -- but it is going to be a case of sorting through them all and trying to decide what the best thing to do is.

Stephen

I have now installed a couple more anti spam plugins for SMF. They seem to be working so far - the number of spam registrations has gone right down. Let's see if this continues over the next couple of weeks.

I don't think we will ever completely solve the problem but with these new plugins it should be reduced to a manageable level at least.