Keeping Forum Free from Spammers

[SBIE User]

Tzuk,

As you can see, there are two spam messages today from non-registered users.

I finally decided to register today and recommend you consider limiting posting to registered users.

Once the spammers find a forum that accepts postings from non-registered users, things go from bad to worse. I expect you will see an increase of spam from non-registered users over the next few days or weeks.

As long as anyone can "read" the forums without registering, it is not too much to ask folks to register in order to post.

Thanks for considering this suggestion.

[Unknown_User_490]

As long as anyone can "read" the forums without registering, it is not too much to ask folks to register in order to post.

Totally agree with you, especially the "read" without registering!

[SBIE User]

Totally agree with you, especially the "read" without registering!

Thanks.

I should also have added to my recommendation that non-registered users should also be allowed to search the forums -- but I'm not sure if phpBB allows that if you set it to require registration for posting.

[tzuk]

That wouldn't help. Spam bots are too sophisticated: They actually know how to register a forum account. I've had that here, so I can tell you this for a fact.

The only thing that stops spam bots is a good captcha test.

Initially I had the standard phpBB captcha, and about a year ago I was experiencing tens of spam posts a day. I installed this terrific custom test and since then, this is only about the fifth occurrence of spam.

(If anybody cares: it's the Visual Confirmation for Guests mod to phpBB.)

I wouldn't make any changes to policy based on just two spam posts in months, and especially since we don't really know if these were automated posts by spam bots. (And I suspect they weren't.)

As a side note, I can tell you another fact, and that is that a lot of people simply lose interest if they are forced to go through hoops when they just want to post the damn comment.

[tzuk]

We're having way too much spam recently. I had to change the captcha. I think everyone will agree the change is definately for the better?

[SBIE User]

Tzuk,

The spam has been particularly bad the last couple of days, but that is probably from only one or two spammers who are posting multiple times.

Other than the spammers, the forum has been unusually quiet the last two days -- which might be because people come here and see the spam and just leave. I can certainly say that I, as at least one regular forum user, checked in less frequently because I was sick of seeing the spam.

The new, improved captcha obviously only applies to unregistered posters -- so I'd be happy if you made it nearly impossible to interpret! Anything that will potentially reduce the spam on the forum would be good, and it won't affect those of us who are registered, because we do not have to respond to capcha anyway.

By the way, have you considered adding some obvious spam words to the word censor filters on phpBB? You can never catch them all, but a list of only a dozen or so really obvious words would have censored some of the spam we have seen in the last couple of days.

[tzuk]

Actually I changed the captcha in a way that makes it far more readable to human posters. But I'm hoping the changes I introduced (larger fonts, and yellow circles around each digit) will fool spam bots that were trained to deal with the unmodified version of this captcha. (It was a phpBB community mod available for download by anyone, so it should be fairly popular.)

If not, I can always tweak it more, now that I had to take the time to figure out how that captcha mod is written.

[SBIE User]

Tzuk,

I came across this interesting link on one trick spammers use to identify target web sites and forums:

http://exodusdev.com/how-spammers-find-your-site .

This may give you some idea of some additional strategies for fighting the jerks.

[tzuk]

Thanks, interesting read. It seems the updated captcha made things much better, for now at least.