Forum spam

[Transistor Rhythm]

I think the forum has a problem lately of manual spamming, again this morning:

viewtopic.php?p=90222#90221

Their main goal is getting a link from a reputed website to a website they want to promote in Google, because Google's algorithm looks at how many high quality websites link to your websites.

Maybe you could close down the possibility for people to put links in their signatures and profiles, and/or automatically put an automatic rel=nofollow parameter in every link? Or disable any type of link until has 10 posts or more?

[fivat]

The "human" spammers are quickly recognized and suppressed, though they are cleaver and clever (they read one message and try to reply something related to the subject).

The two spammers seen this morning are from Vietnam and India.

New tools could be added in the future versions of the Forum. But I'm not sure if people would appreciate a suppression of the signatures.

Patrice Fivat

[Tiger]

The easiest solution is to put a topic-related anti-spam question into the registration form. An example would be "what's the opposite of regular?". Every snowboarder would easily give the correct answer but an Indian spammer would fail.

[fivat]

And what about people who are not speaking English?
They are more than you think. Some of them wrote me (Italians, Germans and Frenchies too).

That's why the anti-spam question for registering to the Forum is a calculation, for now. But I'm open to any other clever proposal.

Patrice Fivat

[pokkis]

During registration user can choose preferred language, btw there looks to be huge number of them supported here currently .
So based on selected language you could ask one clever question with correct language.

[fivat]

Unfortunately, when registering there is no language choice: it's only in English. When it's done, then you can change your language.

And yes, I added a huge number of languages to the Forum in the past.

Patrice Fivat

[pokkis]

Yes, if one does not modify slightly registering process
Done it in past.

[starikashka]

The easiest solution is to put a topic-related anti-spam question into the registration form. An example would be "what's the opposite of regular?". Every snowboarder would easily give the correct answer but an Indian spammer would fail.

They can use Google

[pokkis]

Yes, trying to filter out spamers is always balancing with getting normal people registering easily in. Either you make life hard for them and have more strict control for spamers or you allow folks register more easily and will have sometimes spammers getting in and send some notes before admins will close them out.

[Transistor Rhythm]

I think putting rel=nofollow in every link will at least defeat the purpose of the spamming and won't bother regular users. I think they get paid $0.01 per VALID incoming link.

I found some online documentation here for PHPBB3: http://forums.digitalpoint.com/showthread.php?t=616374

Somebody even posted an example how to limit it for people having less than x posts. I think all links including signatures are rendered through that piece of code.

[fivat]

Thanks for the good tip!
But this will alter Google searches through the Forum in the "good" threads.

And finally the spam links will still be visible in the Forum. We will still have to suppress them manually and remove the users.

Patrice Fivat

[Transistor Rhythm]

I think Google will still index the whole forum, only user made outward links will not be spidered.

[pokkis]

Heh, in our forum i have restricted Google etc robots to collect data
less load less hassle less problems.

[The Blitz]

The easiest solution is to put a topic-related anti-spam question into the registration form.

Exactly, I'm using like Patrice a phpBB 2.x.x forum and I installed this MOD's 6 year's ago --> 0 spams
http://phpbb.mwegner.de/francaise/phpbb ... index.html

The easiest solution is to switch to phpBB 3...

[pokkis]

Fully agree, version 3 is light years better than 2
There are plenty built in functionalities so one does not do too much hacking to do some safety things