XF 1.1 Hundreds of pharma spam threads

[Fergal]

After visiting our relatively new forum this morning, I discovered that over 300 spam threads promoting pharmaceutical drugs, had been posted over night. I've banned the members and blocked their IP addresses.

How can I prevent this from happening again?

Thanks!

 

[RobParker]

Look into some of the spam protection.

I've always found that adding some unique Question/Answer captchas made the biggest difference.

 

[Taxi]

Jake's thread here encapsulates most of the best practices regarding spam and xenForo:
http://xenforo.com/community/threads/dealing-with-forum-spam.35618/

 

[craigiri]

After visiting our relatively new forum this morning, I discovered that over 300 spam threads promoting pharmaceutical drugs, had been posted over night. I've banned the members and blocked their IP addresses.

How can I prevent this from happening again?

Thanks!

Yeah, do ALL of the above.
The first three things you want to do....

1. QA captcha will a question that only your real users would know.
2. Set about 15 seconds on the timer - any registrations quicker than this are probably a bot.
3. Make sure they have email confirmation

Those should take care of 90% plus - then you can set up some of the other stuff....

When my stuff is working, I get less than 1 out of 1,000 attempts who actually get in.

Oh, if you are not using profiles, turn them off.
Install Xenutilities from Jaxel and set up Stop Forum Spam.

 

[Fergal]

Thanks everyone for your helpful replies. I will try implementing those suggestions.