Spam

[dilbert05]

Wow, I don't visit much lately because I don't plan to upgrade my vB until another version of two - hopefully of new features. I mostly come here before an upgrade to make sure my versions of vBA will work - I use all of your products.

I was surprised to see spam, and a lot of it days old. Is this site not doing well any more and isn't being maintained?

I thought I'd try reporting the spam and see if that did anything, but I can't. I got this message "This forum requires that you wait 60 seconds between reporting posts. Please try again in 43 seconds."

I hope all is well and development continues here.

[KW802]

I can't speak for Brian but it's Easter weekend so I'm barely online.

A spam report from you came in at 8:15PM; if there were others I didn't get an alert about them.

[dilbert05]

That was part of the point, I find it silly that I need to wait 60 seconds to report more spam. I only reported the one.
When I went to new posts there was spam from the past week, not just this weekend.
I love your products and with all of the spam was worried the site was not being maintained.

Thanks

[doctorsexy]

There is alot of spam on here...and it dose look like the site is not being maintained ...

[Brian]

The 60 second time limit is set on all form based e-mails on the site in general (by vB's design) and that's in place to stop spammers from sending mass e-mails to our members, so there's not much that can be done to change that.
It has been very tough to stop spammers here over the last few years. We have several systems in place including vB's question/answer system, stopforumspam, and other custom systems but unfortunately they still seem to be getting through. I've just updated the site to use ZB Block and made some more tweaks to stopforumspam, so hopefully those things will help out.

[dilbert05]

Excellent, thanks Brian, and here's looking forward to many more years of great (and hopefully new) products.

[CareyCrew]

The spam situation is not getting any better here. It's got to the point now that I don't want to visit the site. It is also losing sales as people walk away , the last 2 people I sent over here were not impressed to say the least and as a result have gone elsewhere for scripts.

[KW802]

Originally Posted by CareyCrew

The spam situation is not getting any better here. It's got to the point now that I don't want to visit the site. It is also losing sales as people walk away , the last 2 people I sent over here were not impressed to say the least and as a result have gone elsewhere for scripts.

What exactly do you want to be better? There are already automated processes in place to stop known spammers, custom code in place to stop repeat spammers from registering account with a different account name, and manual sweeps are done throughout the day to catch what makes it through. The bulk of the spam is manual humans from one particular country lately and not much is going to stop that short of IP blocking the entire country but even that is pointless when you start dealing with proxies.

[CareyCrew]

Clearly the measures are failing Kevin,every visit means wading through endless spam.

I use dozens of forums and mod for several, none of them have spam like this.

Fact is members don't visit because of the spam, prospective users don't like what they see and leave ......... that and the fact that posts/tickets are often not answered is not doing much to help the image either, customers/users are dropping vBadvanced ......

Anyway, I'll leave you to it, enough is enough.

[Brian]

What would you suggest to stop the spam, Carey? Are any of the forums you mod anywhere near as large as vBa with a significant Google PR (6-8)? If so, what do they use? As Kevin said, we have several measures in place to stop spam, and you wouldn't believe how much is blocked. There are still humans that get through though, and there's not much else I can find to help. I installed ZB Block a few weeks ago and that actually seemed to help with the few still slipping through, but it was also blocking legitimate customers. So... What would you suggest to stop the spammers?

[CareyCrew]

Originally Posted by Brian

What would you suggest to stop the spam, Carey? Are any of the forums you mod anywhere near as large as vBa with a significant Google PR (6-8)? If so, what do they use? As Kevin said, we have several measures in place to stop spam, and you wouldn't believe how much is blocked. There are still humans that get through though, and there's not much else I can find to help. I installed ZB Block a few weeks ago and that actually seemed to help with the few still slipping through, but it was also blocking legitimate customers. So... What would you suggest to stop the spammers?

Brian, yes some of the forums I use are very much bigger that vBa some I mod use other platforms, obviously some spam gets through but nothing like is seen here.

It is obvious that there is a new concerted campaigbn going on and most of the antispam tools are cracked. Q+A for instance is pretty much useless.

@3 years ago a site was linked to at vbulletin.com,there are a few others in existence, these places are run by and for spam operations and list sites members have spammed, link to the spam placed and tell the other members how to access the site, what blocks are in place etc.

Reputation awards are given for the number of hits and links especially if you could keep coming back to the same site. Some sites are listed as easy meat and the information needed to access is passed around.

Spammers use Stop Forum Spam etc. to check what usernames/email/ip are listed and unavavilable to them, they pass around the Q+A answers.

The biggest problem I see is admins not using the tools already on the forum system. I found long ago that the most effective way to get rid of spammers was to remove the tools of their trade.

All new members need placing in a "newbies" group (ie. change the default group to a permission restricted one), here that should be easy as you have licensed/unlicensed members, anyone that is not a vbadvanced user should be placed in a group that is restricted to the pre-sale forum only and be permission restricted to text only posting. No avatar, no signature , no uploads or images of any kind and also no link posting and no messenger.

Simple to do and the spammer is stopped in their tracks, once this happens a few times the information will spread and the attempts fall off rapidly, I had a vb forum that got spammed 24/7 no matter what mods I added, as soon as I took away the permissions in the new group it fell off and stopped.

Why do unlicensed members get access to "Chitchat", Feedback and Showcase where they post links to sites that are non vbulletin and drag visitors/bots away from vBa? If this were my site I would not allow them access anywhere but Pre-sales.

Avast! forum prevents members having a signature until 20 useful posts, image/links are restricted, I have hundreds of posts there but if I try to post 3 links/images in a thread the post goes to mod queue.

Many sites also use post count /membership time as anti spam tools, genuine members and certainly vbulletin admins will understand the reason for the restrictions.

Some links .....

Glowhost is still effective and helps with permissions

http://www.vbulletin.org/forum/showthread.php?t=248470

Bad Behaviour Mod works well

http://www.vbulletin.org/forum/showthread.php?t=261492

Borboles prevent links is a must and should be a standard feature in the admin panel. I know you ould modify that for vB3

http://www.vbulletin.org/forum/showt...=prevent+links


Another link preventer

http://www.vbulletin.org/forum/showt...=prevent+links

Borbole's number of days link preventer

http://www.vbulletin.org/forum/showthread.php?t=249379

[Brian]

Thank you for your suggestions Carey. I've added a new custom plugin to scan posts from new members and send them to moderation if any of the checks are triggered, so hopefully that will greatly cut down on the spam here.