To stop forum spam

[fighterFox]

Tired of my blog stupid spammers. To fight 've found that link can try <snip>

[Paz]

thanks, but I prefer the manual method..... :razz:

[Blazingpie]

thanks, but I prefer the manual method..... :razz:

lol. Also quite ironic that he was spamming a method preventing spam :p

[Paz]

I'm loath to say it but forum and blog spam actually work quite well in Yahoo.

Even using a nofollow tag doesn't deter spammers because these tags are ignored by Yahoo now and show up as regular backlinks.

[Dave A]

Old thread, but anyone here still interested in how to stop forum spam?

There are ways and means!

[daniel]

Im keen to hear your thoughts

Daniel

[Dave A]

I actually made that post before I discovered you've already got Sir Adrian on guard. However, I was surprised to see you're not using email confirmation and Captcha images for registrations.

Perhaps I should have rephrased it anyway - rather how to stop spam being indexed / bugging members (my personal nightmare scenario) which is more applicable to the mechanics which was what I was thinking about at the time.

The How to stop spam debate is, I guess, a far more philosophical discussion. Something around making the effort more than the reward. But even then, the first step is to reduce the capacity for spam generator automation.

[Paz]

Yeah we made a policy decision to avoid using CAPTCHA's and email confirmation at the outset and so far we're inclined to stick with it. I'm pretty sure CAPTCHA's and email registrations will be automated soon - if they're not already.

[Dave A]

I can relate to that. Apart from email confirmation, I've only introduced measures as they've been needed. But in time they've been needed.

The simple font version seems to be vulnerable. The more advanced font versions seem to be keeping the automated responses out so far, although some of them are a bit tricky to read for a human too.

Another option is the question-answer technique. The trick there is to change the questions from time to time. Even simple adjustments make a big difference.

For example - if you have a question of 2 + 3 = (answer 5), all you need do is adjust it to 2 + 4 = (answer 6) to stop robot posters in their tracks.

I've always stuck to email confirmation, in large part for some level of traceability, but there are other benefits.

Apart from making it a little more onerous for would-be spammers, one of the big benefits I've found of the email confirmation system is to reduce the prospects of system emails getting blacklisted as spam. The underlying double opt-in process will get you whitelisted on appeal. Of course, that means you need to track the bounces...

[Blazingpie]

The problem is that CAPTCHA-cracking are becoming increasing automated, and there are other ways being used to crack them (eg hiring sweatshops to sign up accounts on a site, etc). I've seen read about some innovative techniques such as using small pictures as questions - eg 'which of these pictures has a cat in it?' and another which asked you to state the colour of x letter from the y word (eg 3rd letter from the 5th word) in a randomly-generated sentence, and then used javascript to change the colour, or used an image.

[Glen]

I still think we shoud have CAPTCHA on sign-up, it will stop a lot of the spam and to be fair...there is a lot of it to stop.

[RavenServers]

I still think we shoud have CAPTCHA on sign-up, it will stop a lot of the spam and to be fair...there is a lot of it to stop.

I agree with this as well. I don't see the problem with captcha / anti-spam mechanisms as they have become part of the everyday online tasks.