How does Xenforo handle spam

Spok

New member
Did a search on this and didn't come up with an definate answer. Saw different parts in different threads and not sure if I'm missing something or not.

As handling spam is probably the most tedious and ongoing task of any admin, I wanted to ask how XF handles it?

Most spammers want a quick link to a keyword. Is there a way to stop linking until x amount of posts or something similar? My personal opinion is that if unnecessary work is taken away from the admin by a system that is handling it on it's own, it's easier to concentrate on content to have a successful forum.
 
As a prospective customer running vBulletin one of the biggest drains on my time is spam management, the spam cleaner system look like a very handy tool for admins to do a one stop shop and clear out a spammers content but I would like to see some more options for users such as restricting the use of the private message system until a post limit has been met and also restricting posting links until a post count has been met. The private message system in particular has been a problem for me and I'm running a script on my vBulletin forum that adds this capability.
 
There are however several things that could use improvement in my humble opinion. First of all it's plain impossible to use the spam cleaner to instantly clean a lot of users. It very nicely shows all users with the same IP of the spammer... and then forces you to use the spam tool on them one by one rather than a 'use spam cleaner on all users with same IP'.

Secondly, there is no way that I know to prevent spam posts from actually entering the forums. Which means if spam gets by your normal filters, you have to delete those real time. I used to have a mod which made all posts of new users with less than x posts ánd including certain keywoards (like viagra) and suspicious links etc. automatically go moderated. You could still allow them afterwards if needed, but at least spam wouldn't bother your users. I miss this feature quite a lot.

The last point is that you can't mass delete or mass ban users, which again means you have to do them one by one. Which is extremely annoying. There is also no way to look up all users with 0 posts, which means you can't filter on them either.

XenForo's way of handling spam is quite good. It's probably better than any of the competitions. But it could definitely use some improvements as well.
 
... Secondly, there is no way that I know to prevent spam posts from actually entering the forums. Which means if spam gets by your normal filters, you have to delete those real time. I used to have a mod which made all posts of new users with less than x posts ánd including certain keywoards (like viagra) and suspicious links etc. automatically go moderated. You could still allow them afterwards if needed, but at least spam wouldn't bother your users. I miss this feature quite a lot. ...
I may be mistaken, but I believe it will happen in the future. There's code set up for it already, just doesn't do anything yet:

PHP:
    /**
    * Checks whether the message is spam.
    */
    protected function _checkMessageForSpam()
    {
        // TODO: check if the message is spam
    }

So I'm sure Kier and Mike have plans for dealing with spam better. :)
 
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