Lack of interest Better Spam Protection

[caliman]

I am using 1.3.1.

My site is getting hammered with spam. The spam rush is in the middle of the night between 12am and 5am.

I am frustrated, looking for suggestions and have a few as well for xenforo.

I have stopforumspam integrated, have cloudflare bot preventions enbabled and I have used recaptcha and question & answer.

1) xenforo - why can we only choose one or the other (recaptcha and question & answer) and not be able to choose both?

2) in vB, I believe that there was a 1-click option to have 1st post moderated, it appears that I have to create a usergroup in xF to have this ability now, this is laborious. Ideally I would set up a cron to have this going at night and not during day - easier to do with the 1-click option.

Anything to address this issues would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks in advance,

caliman

 

[Amaury]

Honestly, XenForo's anti-spam measures are pretty awesome! In addition, XenForo 1.4 introduces even better anti-spam measures.

 

[caliman]

Those features will help esp honeypot and random field names - still curious why I cannot choose recaptcha AND question and answer. And solutions to 1st post moderation.

 

[Martok]

Not sure what you mean by 1st post moderated.

If you mean the first post in a thread is moderated and subsequent posts are not, this is implemented in 1.4. However it only stops spammers from starting new threads, they can still post their spam in existing threads.

A better solution is to set the Registered group (which should be everybody's primary user group) to have posts moderated. Then set a user group promotion so that say after 5 posts, users are promoted to a secondary user group where their posts are not moderated. So once a moderator approves a user's first 5 posts, after that they will be promoted automatically and can then post freely. Easy to set up and not laborious.

 

[caliman]

Thanks for your reply Martok.

Not sure what you mean by 1st post moderated.

1st post of new member is moderated - and cannot post again until 1st post is approved.

If you mean the first post in a thread is moderated and subsequent posts are not, this is implemented in 1.4. However it only stops spammers from starting new threads, they can still post their spam in existing threads.

So 1st thread is moderated - not 1st post? Drat that is close to what I want. I would prefer 1st post

A better solution is to set the Registered group (which should be everybody's primary user group) to have posts moderated. Then set a user group promotion so that say after 5 posts, users are promoted to a secondary user group where their posts are not moderated. So once a moderator approves a user's first 5 posts, after that they will be promoted automatically and can then post freely. Easy to set up and not laborious.

Thanks for spelling this out. I figured this was the xF approach. It would help, but the labor increase is in having to approve all those posts full time as opposed to my wish which would be to active this at night. Kind of an odd wish, unless you look at this as spam prevention I guess.

 

[0ptima]

Install FoolBotHoneyPot. Works like a charm.
https://xenforo.com/community/resou...-spam-collection-anti-spam-free-version.1474/

 

[Minecraftly]

Install FoolBotHoneyPot. Works like a charm.
https://xenforo.com/community/resou...-spam-collection-anti-spam-free-version.1474/

I'm new to Xenforo but I saw alot of FoolBotHoneyPot via searching. Can you please explain why this plugin is much better than Xenforo's included stopforumspam and honeypot project? Thanks.

 

[0ptima]

XF 1.4 is still not officially supported, so I dont know how effective the included spam options are as I am on 1.3

Once thing I love with the FoolBotHoneyPot addon is the bot log showing all the declined registrations and the reasons why they were declined. It also is very effective at keeping bots out as its the only form of bot registration protection I use. I have no Q and A or other CAPTCHAs in place.

 

[Xon]

Signup for an Akismet account. It does spam checks on messages and profile updates and flags them as moderated if they look particularly spammy.

I've had remarkably few false positives.

 

[Martok]

Thanks for spelling this out. I figured this was the xF approach. It would help, but the labor increase is in having to approve all those posts full time as opposed to my wish which would be to active this at night. Kind of an odd wish, unless you look at this as spam prevention I guess.

You don't have to set it to 5 posts, you could set a lower limit. Surely you don't get that many new members each day for it to be onerous? Better this than dealing with lots of spam.

XF 1.4 is still not officially supported, so I dont know how effective the included spam options are as I am on 1.3

From what I've read, FoolBotHoneyPot doesn't work properly with 1.4 and won't be developed further due to the spam measures being introduced in the core.

 

[caliman]

You don't have to set it to 5 posts, you could set a lower limit. Surely you don't get that many new members each day for it to be onerous? Better this than dealing with lots of spam.

You are right. I will do this now.

EDIT - How do you set the Registered User Group to Moderated Posts? Nevermind - https://xenforo.com/help/user-group-promotions/

Thanks for your help Martok.

 

[swansong]

You don't have to set it to 5 posts, you could set a lower limit.

We do something along these lines. All new users have to post an introduction. We use Simple Forms for people to use to create their introduction. It posts to the introduction forum and mods approve them if they meet our guidelines. Once approved, users are promoted from the Registered usergroup to a Registered Introduction group and gain full posting rights.

We have been doing this for about 6 years (vBulleting and Xenforo) and haven't had a spammer on the board since we implemented this process. With the improved moderation approval in Xenforo, it has even been easier since we made the switch.