XF 1.3 How to clean up a mass of spam on XenForo?

[Alpha1]

I need to clean up a mass of spam posts & members. Hundreds of members have posted tens of thousands of posts. Somehow they got through xenforos spam settings.

I see that there is no way to select all threads on a page.
Is there any way to easily clean this up? Do I really need to go into every single thread and go through the spam cleaner steps? This will take weeks.

 

[Paul B]

The Spam Cleaner applies to member accounts, not threads.

If you want to properly remove all spam, and flag them as spammers, you will need to use the Spam Cleaner on each one.

 

[Alpha1]

Thats not feasible. I will have to delete the site and start over.

 

[Itworx4me]

Thats not feasible. I will have to delete the site and start over.

Use Batch Update Thread

Itworx4me

 

[Paul B]

I would recommend setting up the various spam options more robustly next time, as well as regularly checking the site for spam content.

We get spammers here but they rarely last more than a few hours due to regular moderation.

 

[Alpha1]

Its strange, because the spam settings of this site are robust for registrations. I was asked to help out as the admin was ready to give up.

batch update users /threads will work.

 

[Paul B]

Batch Update Threads won't deal with the spam accounts, nor spam posts, profile posts, and conversations.

 

[Martok]

Out of interest, how long did it take for these hundreds of spammers to make tens of thousands of posts?

I'm also curious to know what your spam options are set to for this mass spam attack to occur.

 

[Itworx4me]

Batch Update Threads won't deal with the spam accounts, nor spam posts, profile posts, and conversations.

Correct..... but it will delete the posts from which the spam accrued. Which I think is what @Alfa1 was wanting.....

Thanks,
Itworx4me

 

[Paul B]

Leaving the "hundreds of members" free to carry on posting spam.

 

[Alpha1]

Leaving the "hundreds of members" free to carry on posting spam.

Batch update members fixes that.

 

[Alpha1]

Out of interest, how long did it take for these hundreds of spammers to make tens of thousands of posts?

I'm also curious to know what your spam options are set to for this mass spam attack to occur.

It took a week for the spammers to create 300+ accounts and 30.000 posts.
SFS, DNSB, registration timer, recaptha were turned on and 1 flag caused rejection of registration.
It's interesting that Google completely removed the site from its listing, notified the admin about the issue by email and asked the webmaster to resubmit after the spam is removed:

User-generated spam
Google has detected user-generated spam on your site. Typically, this kind of spam is found on forum pages, guestbook pages, or in user profiles.

As a result, Google has applied a manual spam action to domain.net/forum/. There may be other actions on your site or parts of your site.

Recommended action

• Find out more about user-generated spam in our Help Center.
• Update your site so that it meets Google's Webmaster Guidelines.
• Once your site is clean and secure, submit a reconsideration request.
• For an updated list of manual actions currently applied to your site, visit the Manual Actions page. If no manual actions are listed, there is no longer a need to file a reconsideration request.

If we determine your site is no longer in violation of our guidelines, we'll revoke the manual action.

 

[Martok]

It took a week for the spammers to create 300+ accounts and 30.000 posts.
SFS, DNSB, registration timer, recaptha were turned on and 1 flag caused rejection of registration.
It's interesting that Google completely removed the site from its listing, notified the admin about the issue by email and asked the webmaster to resubmit after the spam is removed:

Thanks, useful to know.

Recaptcha is innefecive these days, you're better using Question & Answer Captcha instead.

Why did the forum moderators wait a week to do anything? If this had been tackled sooner there wouldn't have been this mess. I deal with any spammers on a daily basis.

 

[WCFA]

SMF has an option to delete account and all posts is there not such and option here in XF?

 

[WCFA]

I know......... there should be a batch update post too .

 

[Paul B]

SMF has an option to delete account and all posts is there not such and option here in XF?

Yes, it's called the Spam Cleaner.

 

[WCFA]

I deleted a client and then used Spam Cleanser did not show anything client is gone, posts still there.
See a process for doing this is not very clear, there is thread batching. spam cleaner and member delete.

Does it not seem odd that one can delete a member easy, but then to erase post and threads has to go somewhere else ?
I am not picking on XF, but all three of these option that are closely related are under different menus
and no cross interaction.
Seems and option box on delete member to add all post / threads of that member to check would make the process real easy.
If everyone is happy as it is, thats cool. To me seems like allot more work to do in several places.

I came to this thread hoping to find something I missed, but knew these options and did not find them
user friendly.

Thanks

 

[Paul B]

The Spam Cleaner does all of that.

 

[Alpha1]

the spam cleaner is great for dealing with small numbers of spam posts, but can not deal with large numbers of spam threads. there should be a spam cleaner function on forum view.

the webmaster is on holiday and the site is not very active.

 

[craigiri]

the spam cleaner is great for dealing with small numbers of spam posts, but can not deal with large numbers of spam threads. there should be a spam cleaner function on forum view.

the webmaster is on holiday and the site is not very active.

Any site which is relatively inactive may want to consider manual registration OK.....I did it for a year or more when I had less than 10 new members per day.

Haven't needed it with XF - although something stopped working for one day last month (maybe the XF checks stopped communicating for whatever reason) and it took less than 8 hours for 500 bad members and many many posts to start showing up. Of course, we moderate the first two posts from every user (good idea for your buddy!), so we caught it before it hit the board.

A batch update got rid of those members. It was easy to find all who signed up in that time period and cruise through them to find the dozen or so who looked real. We deleted all the rest.