Unregistered spam bots

[iCe]

These forums have been getting alot of spam bots bring up old topic and just becoming annoying. Is there anything can can do? (like maybe make a captcha for unregistered accounts?)

[Spht]

A mod that prevents a user from posting if they have < 1 post and their post contains a URL would probably work nicely

[iago]

Although that would work, I hate that mod. I sometimes go to all the trouble of registering for a forum to provide a helpful link and finally, after going through registration and captcha and email verification, I find out I can't post a link. It's frustrating.

And by the way, in response to the original post, captchas and email verification can commonly be defeated by these spambots lately, so they're pretty worthless. Beside Spht's suggestion (which I personally don't like), the best way is to require admin approval for new members for awhile, till the bots get bored. However, that requires admins that have the time to approve new forum members.

The best solution may be to give a couple of active members admin or moderator privileges on every board so they can deal with the posts quickly.

[rabbit]

Isn't there some kind of spam filter you could install?  Thunderbird seems to flag things pretty well.  I'd love to see a mod like that

[Barabajagal]

Just make a captcha for unregistered users posting.
As for Thunderbird, I'm getting disappointed, in it. It catches like... 95% most of the time, but recently a lot of messages have been getting through because they're blank with a pdf attachment.

[Spht]

the best way is to require admin approval for new members for awhile

That's what we're doing now, and have been for several months, but 99% of the "spam bots" are posting as guest on boards that allow guest posts

With my suggestion, if someone new really needed to post a URL, they'd just remove the "http://" or "www" to get around it.  Bots won't do that, so it seems like a very good prevention method

[iago]

Just make a captcha for unregistered users posting.
As for Thunderbird, I'm getting disappointed, in it. It catches like... 95% most of the time, but recently a lot of messages have been getting through because they're blank with a pdf attachment.

I've seen a demonstration of recent spambots tearing through captchas. That's not an effective countermeasure anymore.

the best way is to require admin approval for new members for awhile

That's what we're doing now, and have been for several months, but 99% of the "spam bots" are posting as guest on boards that allow guest posts

With my suggestion, if someone new really needed to post a URL, they'd just remove the "http://" or "www" to get around it.  Bots won't do that, so it seems like a very good prevention method

Ah, didn't realize those were guest posts, when I saw it was a guest account I'd assumed that an admin had deleted their account (+banned them). My bad on that.

Good call on removing the http and www, though. It would be nice if forums automatically did that, making sure that the link wasn't actually a link, which would make spambots like these almost useless. Unfortunately, that would only work if it was widespread.

[ioSys]

Like Andy said its just to make a captcha for unregistered users posting. Simple and nice! Some of my customers websites started to get spammed and this method effectively solved the problem. A question asking to type the answear of 3+4 in a textbox is another way to solve the problem without using captha (who has worked for a lot of people I know).

[Camel]

Or change the form field names so the bots don't know how to post.

[Ribose]

Requiring authorization for this site, sucks! It took more than a week.

[Spht]

Requiring authorization for this site, sucks! It took more than a week.

We must be doing good.  It normally takes over a month

[Ribose]

Requiring authorization for this site, sucks! It took more than a week.

We must be doing good.  It normally takes over a month

I don't mind, and I think that is a good solution. I just wanted to argue it!

[Joe[x86]]

A question asking to type the answear of 3+4 in a textbox is another way to solve the problem without using captha (who has worked for a lot of people I know).

Dude, I had to do one of those the other day at 4AM. I got it wrong at first.

[Ribose]

x86] link=topic=16953.msg173786#msg173786 date=1192180112]

A question asking to type the answear of 3+4 in a textbox is another way to solve the problem without using captha (who has worked for a lot of people I know).

Dude, I had to do one of those the other day at 4AM. I got it wrong at first.

I hope you are kidding.