OT: SPAM

Are the site admins going to do anything about the spam that has invaded the forums. I am getting about 20 spams to 1 legitimate message in my RSS feeds.

... Sebastian erased the first wave, but the worm seems to spread more every time

I don't think it's so easy to track him down as some specifics were changed irregularly 'on the fly' ...

Viktor

it is very annoying!

it is indeed,
but since there are new imagereading methods out for the "known spambot software" it's pretty easy to almost crack each and every captcha that you might be able to add to your site.

So the best way imho is to stop allowing guest posts (afaik a no-go procedure here) and banning the emails behind the bots.

Another way that'll stop most is an "answer the question" check prior posting.
something not too easy works best, like "What's the fourth word on Main-page" or something easier to remember like "what's the current Printerversions name?"

That way you force the botowner to at least search for the answer manually once.
And since most of those *cough* Spammers won't they leave us alone...

But first it has to be implemented of course

'sid

Why make it so complicated? I was able to secure several different, publicly accessible forms using this:

Type the text "[four random characters here]" in this field: <input type="text" name="foobooblah" / > <input type="hidden" value="[the same four characters]" name="myhoovercraftisfullofeels"/>

Really. No joking. Not even a single spambot was able to get around this in the years since - and thousands are being logged trying every day. Maybe it works thanks to the field names or maybe it's so "lame" that no spambot programmer bothered to implement support for cracking this, but whatever the reason, it does.

Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 07/10/2009 05:25PM by Enleth.

I have also seen simple math problems like what is won plus too?

If the admins would switch to a better message board software we could easily work around the spam bots. I am part of the staff on a very large computer site and between 4 of us we curb the spam bots and spammers before they get past 3 post. There is no better solution than vbullitin.

Oh even vBulletin has its limitations...
And I love to work with it too

But don't blame it on Phorum.
I had to install a somewhat modified version of vbstopforumspam to get rid of the spammers.

And the same will surely be possible in phorum;
it even has a hook-system just like vBulletin,
not as easy to use as far as I can see from here, but still okay.

So as soon as someone made an add-on for phorum I guess it'll be much less spam around

'sid