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Handling forum spam
Bursar
Hee Noooo!PDX areaRegistered User regular
Hee Noooo!PDX areaRegistered User regular
Hi, folks.
One of the duties that gets pawned off on me at my workplace is monitoring our company forums. We run VBulletin 3.7.0, and our software gets updated rarely, usually only in the event of a catastrophic server crash, since "as long as we're building up from nothing, we might as well have a better foundation" (this has happened twice in the 5 years I've been there, which seems more than "rare" to me, but whatever).
Lately, we're having major issues with spammers. We've restricted thread creation rights to users who have a small number of posts, so we're not clearing away large swaths of spam threads, but there are spam posts that have to be cleared away from the fora almost every time I check on them.
Now, we have reduced the automated spam a bit by including some basic non-standard required questions during the account creation process, but what I think is happening is that we're getting "spam farms" of people being hired to do nothing but create accounts and post spam. Making bigger and bigger hurdles to deter these people will do nothing but hinder legitimate prospective users, and I'm not seeing a way out of being on constant patrol for spam.
I'm trying to find a way that I can suggest to the people who actually manage our forum software in order to do something about this, and I was hoping that some people here may have had similar troubles in the past and may be able to share their successes (or entertaining failures
) in the spam-fighting field.
One of the duties that gets pawned off on me at my workplace is monitoring our company forums. We run VBulletin 3.7.0, and our software gets updated rarely, usually only in the event of a catastrophic server crash, since "as long as we're building up from nothing, we might as well have a better foundation" (this has happened twice in the 5 years I've been there, which seems more than "rare" to me, but whatever).
Lately, we're having major issues with spammers. We've restricted thread creation rights to users who have a small number of posts, so we're not clearing away large swaths of spam threads, but there are spam posts that have to be cleared away from the fora almost every time I check on them.
Now, we have reduced the automated spam a bit by including some basic non-standard required questions during the account creation process, but what I think is happening is that we're getting "spam farms" of people being hired to do nothing but create accounts and post spam. Making bigger and bigger hurdles to deter these people will do nothing but hinder legitimate prospective users, and I'm not seeing a way out of being on constant patrol for spam.
I'm trying to find a way that I can suggest to the people who actually manage our forum software in order to do something about this, and I was hoping that some people here may have had similar troubles in the past and may be able to share their successes (or entertaining failures
) in the spam-fighting field. GNU Terry Pratchett
PSN: Wstfgl | GamerTag: An Evil Plan | Battle.net: FallenIdle#1970
Hit me up on BoardGameArena! User: Loaded D1
PSN: Wstfgl | GamerTag: An Evil Plan | Battle.net: FallenIdle#1970
Hit me up on BoardGameArena! User: Loaded D1
Spoilered until images are unborked. 
Bursar on
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Posts
There's also the one-click spammer ban that nukes an account (deletes all of their posts and bans them). Over time, you can IP-ban large swaths of spammers if you're willing to put in the work hours to find them all (IP-tracing the subnets on the spammers).
If it won't affect your business model much, IP-banning India and China isn't a terrible idea.