How to stop spamming?

[sylvain]

Hi all,

What is the best way to prevent spamming?

I use captcha but spamming seems to come from "human" and mainly from India

At first, I'd like to block countries. There is an add-on called Block countries but I didn't find any recent version.

 

[Arty]

Setup Q&A captcha with non-trivial question and you'll be fine.

By "non-trivial question" I mean something where answer does not automatically appear when you type question in search engines. Questions like "how much is 2+2" are pointless, spam bots can handle them. You need to be creative, think of something new. Question should be changed from time to time.

ReCaptcha is pointless, spam bots broke it long time ago and humans have harder time figuring it out than bots.

 

[Sador]

The best questions are questions that are stunningly easy, but can only be answered by humans.

Like "which WORD is written in capitals?"

Answer: word / WORD.

 

[sylvain]

Phrases can be answered by any humans. I'd prefer block specific countries like India, they will never participate to my forum anyway.

 

[Sador]

vBulletin had this -amazing- addon that checked for a load of things, and if someone posted spam words (which you could set) or stuff like links and images (all configurable) on their first x posts (whatever you set it to) it would put the post(s) automatically in moderation queue (or other actions, if you preferred, I think) and no spam would reach the board itself. Very occasionally caused a bit of a problem if someone just joined and tried to post something with a link in it, but other than that it stopped all spam except for 1 single post that managed to came through.

I kinda miss it, but Jaxels addon + some questions are quite capable to stop most spam for me as well, so far.

 

[sylvain]

What Jaxels addon you are talking about?


The more I think, the more I gonna try phrases.

What should I know to have the "best" anti spamming phrases?

 

[Anthony Parsons]

Two free essential tools:

1. http://xenforo.com/community/resources/splendidpoint-com-antispam-prevent-links-and-emails.106/
2. http://xenforo.com/community/resources/8wayrun-com-xenutiles-tools.104/

 

[sylvain]

Thanks, I'll give them a try!