Spammer Forum vs spam

[Echo_of_thunder 1]

Every day I get atleast 3 or 4 people wishing to join my forum. You would think this is a good thing but,of these most are spammers trying to sell everything from Viagra to you know what. I have spent a good timesetting up this and for what? For someone to join and start spamming? I have even set it up so that I haveto appove the membership, yet they still join. This makes me so very angry that someone just wants to goonto a site and for what? to sell there junk and spam members that do not wish to be bothered by someoneselling stuff that they do not want or don't even need. What is so bad one of these so called spammerskeeps trying to join over and over again, I have even sent him a E mail to them to inform them whythey have not been allowed to join our forum. yet they still do. They do not even reply to my E mailto say thank you no problem. just try an join again. Do I just let them join and then ban them? I do not likebanning anyone. That just makes trouble I know. I do not wish for that to happen. True also more member on theforum makes it look good, but having a spammer there would give the site a bad name. What do I do here? Let them join or just keep them out, or just ban them? I am at wits end herewith this problem. I want my forum to be one of the better ones, with lots of people but I do notwant spammers or trouble makers.

[serverph 0]

you're not alone. these spammers are the bane of the internet, so better deal with them with an iron fist, so they don't further disrupt your forum. desperate times, desperate measures. * enlist the help of other members to report such spam, as we do here on Xisto.* promote trustworthy members as moderators and arm them with moderator tools to cull the spammers.* set up a warning system, like what we have here on Xisto.* post #1 = spam links --> account ban!* recurring spam coming from recurring IP --> IP ban!

[rvalkass 5]

The problem is that you are most likely not dealing with people, but with automated systems to create accounts. Your current tactics are geared more towards stopping people than stopping a computer.

I have even set it up so that I have to appove the membership, yet they still join.

The software being used most likely does not detect that membership needs to be approved, or it hopes you'll let them through anyway. This is only acting as a deterrent to legitimate people wishing to sign up.

I have even sent him a E mail to them to inform them why they have not been allowed to join our forum. yet they still do. They do not even reply to my E mail to say thank you no problem. just try an join again.

As you're dealing with a computer, the email address is likely not real, not being checked, or is only being checked by a computer, and therefore you will never receive a reply. If they are all using the same email address, fake or otherwise, you can usually ban that email address using the admin control panel for whatever forum software you are using.

I would never let these spam accounts join. It artificially inflates the member count, and gives a bad impression to your forums. You need to stop them before they even sign up. If they're using the same IP address (or similar ones) then ban them. You can usually ban a block of IP addresses too (such as 10.10.10.* or 127.0.*.*) if they keep changing them.

If you don't have a CAPTCHA enabled on your registration page, get one. Most forums have them built in, and there are often plugins or modifications to give different and better CAPTCHAs.If you are using the standard 'warped text' style CAPTCHA then try to make it as hard as possible, but still easy for a human to read. Try it out yourself a few dozen times to make sure it's always legible. You can also get ones that ask a question of the user, but a computer couldn't answer. For example, "What colour is an orange?" or "What is 4 plus 3?". That should stop most spam bots registering accounts with you.

To deal with the problem of any spam that does get posted, get together a team of two or three people whom you trust, and assign them as moderators of your forum. Set them the task of eliminating any spam that manages to get through. If necessary, give them the power to ban members, IP addresses or email addresses, so that they can stop 'floods' of spam.

There may also be a plugin/modification for some forums that checks each post against a central database of known spam posts, and then marks it for review before it appears, or deletes it straight away. That would automate the process of removing spam, but may remove legitimate posts in the process if you're not careful.

[terminal2k 0]

rvalkass is right. most of the spam on forums is done by "spambots". the tactics he mentioned about verification questions when a user signs up will get rid of most of these, good moderators and admins should be able to deal with the rest without causing any disruption to your users.

[OpaQue 15]

Please Take Any Action suitable from Banning to Crucifying to keep this place clean Watching happy & satisfied members is a joy... but just the reverse for Spammers!

[anheizhiye 0]

see this :

Up to 80% of spam targetted at Internet users in North America and Europe is generated by a hard-core group of around 200 known professional spam gangs whose names, aliases and operations are documented in Spamhaus' Register Of Known Spam Operations (ROKSO) database.
This TOP 10 chart of ROKSO-listed spammers is based on those Spamhaus views as the highest threat, the worst of the career spammers causing the most damage on the Internet currently. Spamhaus flags these as a priority for Law Enforcement Agencies.

The world's worst spammers and spam gangs this week are:

The 10 Worst ROKSO Spammers:

1.Canadian Pharmacy
2.Leo Kuvayev / BadCow
3.HerbalKing
4.Vincent Chan / yoric.net
5.Alex Blood / Alexander Mosh / AlekseyB / Alex Polyakov
6.Nikhil Kumar Pragji / Dark-Mailer
7.Peter Severa / Peter Levashov
8.Yambo Financials
9.Ruslan Ibragimov / send-safe.com
10.Anton Gorodov / Gorodetsk - srx / s-rx

you could list their names,then i thout they will been reduced!

Notice from jlhaslip:

Ironic. Copied from https://www.spamhaus.org/statistics/spammers/.

[contactskn 2]

Yes dear friend you are right Even here in Xisto many I have seen when they are try to advertize their commodities and nothing else they are not concerned with good quality discussion etc. Just want to attract people out here with their products and their prices. What to do as in good forums its a problem faced by its admins. Even my wife is going to start a website this month which includes forum and I think this will be a problem for her also.?

[networker 0]

Definitly Spam bots are a problem.Definitly should usea captcha on a forum registration. On other kinds ofregistration a captcha isn't really needed as much. The thing about real humans and spamming though,is thattheres a fine line between telling people everything about yourself and spamming. If you're interests happen to be say websites, are you spamming people bypromoting your own site?Some might say yes while others differ.It's debatable.

Edited January 17, 2009 by networker (see edit history)

[Zeyomie 0]

Every day I get atleast 3 or 4 people wishing to join my forum. You would think this is a good thing but,of these most are spammers trying to sell everything from Viagra to you know what. I have spent a good time
setting up this and for what? For someone to join and start spamming? I have even set it up so that I have
to appove the membership, yet they still join. This makes me so very angry that someone just wants to go
onto a site and for what? to sell there junk and spam members that do not wish to be bothered by someone
selling stuff that they do not want or don't even need. What is so bad one of these so called spammers
keeps trying to join over and over again, I have even sent him a E mail to them to inform them why
they have not been allowed to join our forum. yet they still do. They do not even reply to my E mail
to say thank you no problem. just try an join again. Do I just let them join and then ban them? I do not like
banning anyone. That just makes trouble I know. I do not wish for that to happen. True also more member on the
forum makes it look good, but having a spammer there would give the site a bad name.

What do I do here? Let them join or just keep them out, or just ban them? I am at wits end here
with this problem. I want my forum to be one of the better ones, with lots of people but I do not
want spammers or trouble makers.

I'm webmaster of my friends site, it's been inactive for several months. I went a had to disable the forum because of all the spam and whatnot. People selling stuff, posting links to porn sites. Someone was even sending pm's to our real members. I think there was over 5,000 registrations, none of them legit. there was over 10,000 postings, all of them spam. It was crazy. I felt horrible. Even before this I installed a mass delete member script to help control it. But it was just so bad. I don't know how larger sites deal with it. Very good moderators I guess.

[Echo_of_thunder 1]

I'm webmaster of my friends site, it's been inactive for several months. I went a had to disable the forum because of all the spam and whatnot. People selling stuff, posting links to porn sites. Someone was even sending pm's to our real members. I think there was over 5,000 registrations, none of them legit. there was over 10,000 postings, all of them spam. It was crazy. I felt horrible. Even before this I installed a mass delete member script to help control it. But it was just so bad. I don't know how larger sites deal with it. Very good moderators I guess.

Well I have switched Forum software and now No more spammer trying to Join. Now I am wordering what is it that Auto Spammers look for in joing a forum? When I used phpbb forum I would get maybe 1 or 2 of these a month. SMF maybe 2 or 3 a week now that I am using and have been for the last 2 weeks AEF I have had Zero joining ( so far )

[Zeyomie 0]

Well I have switched Forum software and now No more spammer trying to Join. Now I am wordering what is it that Auto Spammers look for in joing a forum? When I used phpbb forum I would get maybe 1 or 2 of these a month. SMF maybe 2 or 3 a week now that I am using and have been for the last 2 weeks AEF I have had Zero joining ( so far )

Boy am I behind the times. This is a stupid question. But, what is AEF? I've never heard of it. SMF either. But from what you say, I don't think I'd want that one. lol We were using phpbb, and so we have a lot of problems with that...

[Tramposch 1]

Boy am I behind the times. This is a stupid question. But, what is AEF? I've never heard of it. SMF either. But from what you say, I don't think I'd want that one. lol We were using phpbb, and so we have a lot of problems with that...

AEF is a relatively new free forum software. You can check them out at http://anelectron.com/ and SMF has been around for a while and is probably the most used free forum software; you can check them out at http://simplemachines.org/.