right over the past few weeks my site has been getting loads of mebers sign up then make spam posts leave links to illegal sites my mods have deleted about 20 posts since tuesday and over the past few weeks its been getting hit hard by spammers!

I have been thinking on ways to get round this problem but really cant think of away i was thinking about putting up a warning notice telling members old and new that if any member was caught spamming, they would be banned instantly..no pm's no warning just an automatic ban!

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My forum AllTones4U
Freembiworld
mygreatsite

make it so they can only post a URL after so many posts, make them introduce themselves, theres no perfect solution I dont think.

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PA Forums
Philly Sports
Delaware Online
boomshockalacka

thanks for this good idea about the links idea but i aint sure how to set this up on vb i will look into this!

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My forum AllTones4U
Freembiworld
mygreatsite

no problem, im pretty sure its a hack/add, but it may be built into VB, not sure.

on a side note, i clicked on the link to your site and it loaded REALLY slow then it crashed my internet totally......maybe its cause its foriegn (UK) or something i really dont know.....

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PA Forums
Philly Sports
Delaware Online
boomshockalacka

i will check it out on the vb site!

as for crashing your internet im unsure about its been loading fine here? the host is in the USA?

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My forum AllTones4U
Freembiworld
mygreatsite

Well, I'll start off by saying that there are very few sure fire ways to keep out all spammers...there comes a point where you just have to accept the fact that it's all part of running forums - getting rid of spammers.

The first thing to do is make sure that you have image verification turned on...that will help quite a bit, but it won't stop the extremely innovative bots

Once you have done that, you can also require email verification...I usually don't like to do this because I think it discourages people from registering and then actually posting...but if the spam is just too much to bear, you might want to consider doing this - that will stop some of those innovative bots.

The next thing you can do is require admin validation...meaning you have to manually approve every new account...I've never done this, and I'm sure you can imagine the problems that come with it...

Anyways, one more thing I would suggest is to make note of the email addresses that these spam bots are using. Oftentimes, you'll find that a lot of the bots are using the same domain...I know that one I've noticed here at AF is @mail.ru ...vB lets you prevent any email addresses you'd like from registering in the forums, so I added that one to our blocked list and did notice that it helped a bit.

But again...in the end, it's all part of running forums. The important thing is to have a good staff on board - if you dont always have a staff member logged in at all times, then you probably need more staff...if you have the right number of staff, then you shouldn't have to worry about spam trashing your forums.

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...some super-sweet signature

I think it is a must to have the image verification on. Sure it’s not going to stop it completely, but it can slow them down.

I also noticed that a lot of the spammers that were coming to my site were also from the @mail.ru and I blocked the domain and haven’t had a problem since.

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^^ Thats why he runs the place, great post as usual Ryan

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PA Forums
Philly Sports
Delaware Online
boomshockalacka

thanks again for this top advise i have the image verification on i no what you mean about it been part of running a forum i just want to try cut it down and i hope this advise will work thanks again!

thanks for the tip about the email address banning looked at all the spammers and all @mail.ru and few other .ru ones thanks alot again!

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My forum AllTones4U
Freembiworld
mygreatsite

This is a big problem for many forum owners. A fellow forum owner gets over 50 new members a day posting porn threads.

In one of my forum, they are just registering and putting a link in their signature.

I think that if they can not post a link with their first post, will reduce spamming quite much - great idea!

//Andreas

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