vBulletin spam solutions

**Chatmaster** · 21st February 2007, 08:40 AM

One of the forums I moderate has major spam issues. It is driving us up the wall and I wondered what advice any of you might have to combat spam on vBulletin forums?

Also anybody familiar with the following? http://www.vbulletin.org/forum/showthread.php?t=134778

**Casinomeister** · 21st February 2007, 05:30 PM

Originally Posted by Chatmaster

One of the forums I moderate has major spam issues. It is driving us up the wall and I wondered what advice any of you might have to combat spam on vBulletin forums?

Also anybody familiar with the following? http://www.vbulletin.org/forum/showthread.php?t=134778

I haven't checked out that hack too much, but if a poster were to post a URL to evilcasino.com as a warning to others, he'd get nailed as a spammer.

At Casinomeister, the sign-ups are moderated. I did this after WOL and I got swamped with a bunch of Russian spammers. I don't know if it was a something automated or what, but all of the fields such as "location" "favorite film" etc. were filled with nonsense like dfdfdfdf

So now if you sign up, I check each profile out to make sure they are filling out the fields with legitimate answers. The sign-up instructions state that fields must not have "bogus" answers such as ewewewe etc. When I come across these accounts, I delete them - simple as that.

After a while, it becomes second nature on figuring out who is going to spam by looking at what they fill in. I usually catch them pretty fast. Then they get publicly executed.

You can also disallow posting hyperlinks for certain user groups (check out the user group settings). You can have newbies who initially sign up belonging to a group that can't have hyperlinks in their text. It's still spam though, but it won't have a hyper link. Hope this helps.

**Chatmaster** · 21st February 2007, 10:54 PM

I often wondered how you kept the forum so clean! Hats of to you as it is running smoothly.

I will certainly discuss your strategy with my fellow mods at the other forum, although I expect the argument of conversion issues. (the forum is still small but it is growing). It seems like we were put on some kind of a spam software list and it is a full time job to keep the forum clean.

**Casinomeister** · 21st February 2007, 11:09 PM

Originally Posted by Chatmaster

I often wondered how you kept the forum so clean! Hats of to you as it is running smoothly.

I will certainly discuss your strategy with my fellow mods at the other forum, although I expect the argument of conversion issues. (the forum is still small but it is growing). It seems like we were put on some kind of a spam software list and it is a full time job to keep the forum clean.

Moderate the signups. I probably delete around one out of 20 signer-uppers for bogus answers so conversions aren't really affected.

**Casinomeister** · 21st February 2007, 11:15 PM

I almost forgot. I used to have a spam zone here where people could post their ads for casinos or portals etc. I discontinued this in October when I stopped advertising for US members. Now it's just a Help Wanted/For Sale section.

But since I made this change, spammers have increased - they have nowhere to go but to the main forum

So you may want to set up a commercial forum - it'll act as a release valve.

**pokeraddict** · 13th March 2007, 10:48 PM

So you may want to set up a commercial forum - it'll act as a release valve.

I did this for a while too. The problem is that the spammers were mostly porn and some were posting pics of it. After I deleted it my OT forum got all the spam. CM has some great ideas on how to curb it on VB.

**Chatmaster** · 13th March 2007, 11:03 PM

Well we switched on the function that moderate the 1st time posters and it is working great. We have much less spam to deal with and it is much more managable these days. Thanks again Bryan!

**Webzcas** · 11th April 2007, 11:34 AM

There is a great mod call the 'Is Bot' Mod available for VBulletin. This basically allows you to set a minimum time limit a new user has to pass to allow the registration to be successful. Most 'Humans' take over 15 seconds to complete the form. Therefore I have it set on my forums, that any registrations that are completed in under 15 seconds get automatically rejected. This basically nullifies Bot Spam and Bot Sign Ups.

If anyone wants a copy of the mod, send me the PM.

**spearmaster** · 13th April 2007, 06:41 AM

Thanks for the IS Bot Mod, Webzcas. It caught a number of bots trying to get into my forum, and most had email addresses from mail.ru and one other address like mail-pop.com or something. A cursory look at the registrations shows that they are not likely to be real visitors.