Topic: how do YOU combat spam?

it's no surprise that spam has become a major problem lately and is the baine of many admins. what are YOU doing on your boards(doesn't have to be PunBB, it's all spam no matter what forum you use) to combat it, prevent it, fight back? if you have links to articles, plugins, tips, whatever, it's always helpfull.

me, on my vb(soon to be converted to PunBB) boards i'm using email varification + captcha + Akismet and that seems to be working so far. on my PunBB boards i'm using email varification and no guest posting. plus i only have 8 members so it's not a problem yet.

~James
FluxBB - Less is more

Re: how do YOU combat spam?

I turned off guest posting and that did it for my small boards smile

3

Re: how do YOU combat spam?

Dr.Jeckyl wrote:

on my PunBB boards i'm using email varification and no guest posting.

Ditto but I'm getting a ton of new members lately.

4 (edited by MadHatter 2006-08-31 19:32)

Re: how do YOU combat spam?

one way is to alter the way registration works.  add a users_temp table that stores the users record w/ the addition of 2 extra fields which are 1) a ramdomly generated digest (not a hash of the password), and 2) a plain text associative word.  when the user signs up, they are displayed an image of an object (which they're told to remember.  this is a simple one word object like circle, or square, or something very very simple).  when the user submits their registration the link in the email has the random digest token, and takes them to a page where they then have to enter in the word to match the picture they saw when the signed up.  when they've successfully enterd the right word they're added to the users table (and removed from the temp table).  if they miss the word 3 times, their record is removed and they're told to re-register.

this will cut down on the number of people who provide bogus email addresses, but know the formula for generating the hash of their password, and posting the authorization post that finalizes the sign up process.  once you keep them from registering, then the random spam should also stop.

Re: how do YOU combat spam?

One thing I'd love to see included in 1.3's post moderation is the ability to turn it on for users with x or less posts, where you set x in the options. And ofcourse if none of the posts got approved, don't let the user directly post untill there is an approved one =P

Re: how do YOU combat spam?

Bekko: Or allow it to be on a per-usergroup basis and someone can write a mod to automatically graduate a person when they reach x number of approved posts tongue

Re: how do YOU combat spam?

Yeah, that could work too tongue Well, it's about the same...

Re: how do YOU combat spam?

Yeah, but more integrated and automated within the overall PunBB system tongue

9

Re: how do YOU combat spam?

Dr.Jeckyl wrote:

what are YOU doing on your boards(doesn't have to be PunBB, it's all spam no matter what forum you use) to combat it, prevent it, fight back?

I don't allow guest posts (guests suck. Whoever is too coward to even register with a disposable email address has not deserved posting Dot tongue )
Plus I'm using the captcha mod along with email verification which prevents robot  registrations.

The German PunBB Site:
PunBB-forum.de

10 (edited by abclf 2006-09-01 14:55)

Re: how do YOU combat spam?

For me -I want a forum opened to guests- askimet plugin made for punBB is a working solution. Some errors but it's ok at this time, although I think it may be better.
You may also have a look at Tobi's code, counting numer of url in post : http://punbb.org/forums/viewtopic.php?pid=76114#p76114 or Elbekko's mod : http://punbb.org/forums/viewtopic.php?pid=76146#p76146

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Re: how do YOU combat spam?

abclf wrote:

You may also have a look at Tobi's code, counting numer of url in post

That's sort of what the WHT forums do, you need to have a certain number of posts before you can embed links.