Topic: A tip for poeple having trouble with spammers

I have found a useful way of slowing down spammers registering on a message board. I have been having trouble with drug spam lately on my forum and have had good luck slowing them down by censoring the drug names. Censoring a word stops anyone from using it in their username as well as posting messages with it. They seem to always use the drug name in their user name and even if not they can't post anything about it without me easily seeing my censored message come up <No Drug Spammers!>.

Drugs have no place on my board and are gennerally something that doesn't need to be discussed, as well I also think I have a younger crowd of visiters so this is definatly something I want to keep an eye on. Here are the drug names that most people might as well just go ahead and censor to stop future annoying spammers. 
*phentermine*
*tramadol*
*xanax*
*hydrocodone*
and maybe even *Viagra*

Make sure to use the wildcard * so that they can't just trick the system.

If you have any advice or other tricks to share with us please post it here!

Re: A tip for poeple having trouble with spammers

needshelp wrote:

If you have any advice or other tricks to share with us please post it here!

start executing spammers. that will stop it pretty quick.

~James
FluxBB - Less is more

Re: A tip for poeple having trouble with spammers

Censoring a word stops anyone from using it in their username as well as posting messages with it.

It doesn't stop you from posting messages with a censored word wink

4 (edited by needshelp 2006-08-26 04:28)

Re: A tip for poeple having trouble with spammers

No but  it <censored> stops <censored> from getting their <censored> word across easily.

And when it comes down to it, if we can show them they are wasting their time they will move on to somewhere or something easier to spam.

P.S. Dr.Jeckyl I agree they should get the death penalty, or at least a year in jail for every person they have bothered.

Re: A tip for poeple having trouble with spammers

it is a serious problem and it's getting worse. i also run a vb board and with captcha + email varification + no guest posting they still get through.

~James
FluxBB - Less is more

Re: A tip for poeple having trouble with spammers

needshelp wrote:

No but  it <censored> stops <censored> from getting their <censored> word across easily.

And when it comes down to it, if we can show them they are wasting their time they will move on to somewhere or something easier to spam.

They use bots though, so they're not really wasting any time tongue

Re: A tip for poeple having trouble with spammers

Aye I agree and also I figured it was some kind of automated thing. I don't know how it can be worth their time still though, who in their right mind would order miracle drugs that were spammed on a website about miniature wargames.... but anyways is there anyway we can have posts sent to use so we can verify them and allow or dissallow them to be actually posted. Kind of like how yahoo newgroups work. This would be no more or less annoying oto me because I'm going in and getting rid of them anyways at the moment but it would stop people from seeing it.

8 (edited by Smartys 2006-08-28 11:15)

Re: A tip for poeple having trouble with spammers

You mean have a moderation queue?
I just saw this, not sure how good it is:
http://www.punres.org/viewtopic.php?id=1884

And 1.3 will have a moderation queue built in

Re: A tip for poeple having trouble with spammers

Dr.Jeckyl wrote:
needshelp wrote:

If you have any advice or other tricks to share with us please post it here!

start executing spammers. that will stop it pretty quick.

I agree with this one... big_smile



That a side... Spammers are starting to learn that sites are picking up these keywords... Then they will just do many variations like so... V1agra and so on... Spammers are annoying... sad

Re: A tip for poeple having trouble with spammers

StevenBullen wrote:

That a side... Spammers are starting to learn that sites are picking up these keywords... Then they will just do many variations like so... V1agra and so on... Spammers are annoying... sad

They already do that with my email, so I guess it's only a matter of time before such a thing becomes widespread on forums too, unless they're specifically trying to bump their search rank for a specific keyword (which in many instances is probably the case).

Looking for a certain modification for your forum? Please take a look here before posting.

Re: A tip for poeple having trouble with spammers

Thanks Smartys! That looks like what I want, I'll have to check it out!  Although I may just wait until 1.3 because I'm always more nervous doing that stuff myself.

Re: A tip for poeple having trouble with spammers

Wouldn't the Akismet spam extension mod work for this?

Re: A tip for poeple having trouble with spammers

@tntcheats: Probably, but you have to accept the risk of false positives.

I'll probably add it to my forum at some point, but most likely only for guests.

Looking for a certain modification for your forum? Please take a look here before posting.

14 (edited by Tobi 2006-08-31 09:20)

Re: A tip for poeple having trouble with spammers

I just wrote a small piece of code that helps against spammers who promote lists of URLs (like they mostly do).

Open post.php
Go to somewhere around line 156 (My board is a bit moodified...)
Above "// Validate BBCode syntax" enter

    preg_match_all("|http\://|", $message, $match);
    if(count($match[0]) > 2)    {
        $errors[] = $lang_post['Spam message'];
       }

And in your lang/<LANG>/post.php enter somewhere in the $lang_post-Array

'Spam message'        =>    'This appears to be spam.',

Works for me....
however, it means that  users are not allowed to post more than two URLs.
Well, you can change the number but then it  makes less sense.

The German PunBB Site:
PunBB-forum.de

Re: A tip for poeple having trouble with spammers

Then spammers will just make more posts tongue

Re: A tip for poeple having trouble with spammers

An URL count is included in my spam protection mod. You can just take that one tongue

17

Re: A tip for poeple having trouble with spammers

elbekko wrote:

An URL count is included in my spam protection mod. You can just take that one

Even better. So if there is a spam protection mod why this lengthy discussion then? tongue

The German PunBB Site:
PunBB-forum.de

Re: A tip for poeple having trouble with spammers

Tobi wrote:
elbekko wrote:

An URL count is included in my spam protection mod. You can just take that one

Even better. So if there is a spam protection mod why this lengthy discussion then? tongue

Because it's far, far from perfect =P

I'm willing to improve it tho smile

Re: A tip for poeple having trouble with spammers

Thanks very much again for all the great input!
Hope this helps some poeple other than me as well!