XF 1.1 My Forum's Getting Lots Of Spam

System0

Active member
edit by jake - I just posted a resource that consolidates all of the information from this thread into one guide:
http://xenforo.com/community/resources/dealing-with-forum-spam.980/


I've never had any problems with spam before but when I checked my forum today I saw lots of spam threads. Some were in Russian though many were in English.

I checked some users and they had fully validated their account using Gmail. The spam is undoubtedly automated though.

Some users have signed up using the domain andasio.com.

At the moment I am getting a new thread every few minutes and the IP addresses are all different so there doesn't seem to be any way to stop it

(note: I haven't installed any new add ons or mods in a while so I don't think that's the issue)

I used to have this problem with vBulletin though this is the first time I've ever had a problem with XenForo. It's kind of taken me by surprise to be honest.

Any idea how this is happening and how I can stop it?

Thanks,
Kevin
 
Yeah I'd contact Xenforo. If they can't do it, contact me and I'll try and make time later today to walk you through it. :)
Just wanted to drop an update. I contacted the fine folks at Xenforo and they were able to help me out with a re-install. Now I'm researching these anti-spam plug-ins to see which one(s) I want to install and how to install them. =)
 
You can't bypass Q&A. Test it yourself. Try to register without answering the question correctly.

If bots are registering despite Q&A that means they are answering the questions correctly.
 
You can't bypass Q&A. Test it yourself. Try to register without answering the question correctly.

If bots are registering despite Q&A that means they are answering the questions correctly.
Yes, my choice of words was off.

Either way, they've either gone through their list of Xenforo forums and figured out our Q&A answers or they've made their bot smarter because after a couple of months of peace, the XRumer bots are back.

Anyone know if http://areyouahuman.com is still working on a XF plugin?
 
Is there a way to determine which Q&A questions have been figured out? Specifically, can we somehow see what question a spammer answered correctly? I have five Q&A's in rotation and I've only had a few spammers get through. It'd be nice to just remove the one they've learned and not have to come up with a whole new list of questions.
 
You could do this if you used CustomImgCaptcha (if you have the time to convert your QAs to images)
But I don't think there is an option in the core for normal QAs, I don't think it is logged.
 
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