Small fonts in spammer posts

[Steve Freides]

Recently I have been fooled by spammers because their first post, which shows up in my approval queue, contains links in a tiny font which I didn’t even notice. How could I:

Eliminate font choices

and/or

eliminate links

in new member posts. I use the user promotion that comes with XF so my new users are in the group Registered until the promotion moves them into the group Verified.

Thanks in advance for your replies.

 

[Max Taxable]

Regex in spam options.

 

[Steve Freides]

Regex in spam options.

Sorry, "regex?" What do you mean?

I have this

/^\[url.*\[\/url\]$/si
/^http\S+$/si
/\[url=("|')?([^"'\]]+)("|')?\].*\[url\]\2\[/si
/\[url=("|')?([^"'\]]+)("|')?\].*\[url=("|')?\2("|')?\]/si
/^https?:\/\/\S+\n/si

in my Spam Phrases, but it doesn't help me because I see all new users first few posts. I need something that differentiates posts with URLs, or simply doesn't allow them to be input if the user is not in Verified - or some way to be alerted to these things.

Thanks.

-S-

 

[Max Taxable]

This is what I'm using:

/https?:|www\./i
/^\[url.*\[\/url\]$/si
/^http\S+$/si
/\[url=("|')?([^"'\]]+)("|')?\].*\[url\]\2\[/si
/\[url=("|')?([^"'\]]+)("|')?\].*\[url=("|')?\2("|')?\]/si

Don't know that there's any difference. But if there's a link in the post it doesn't matter font size. Perhaps I'm not understanding what you're asking.

I use it so that any new member who posts links, those posts have to be manually approved. There's two options in spam phrases for action you want the system to take. Manually approve or Reject. I don't use reject because it sends a message telling the spammer what's going on. No human spam is seeing the public.

Additionally I use the promotion system for all new arrivals, they don't get approved until reaching X posts (I have it set to 1). It's set to 1 because they have zero post count anyway until you approve a post. I also turn off the message they get telling them their post(s) are moderated and won't be posted until approval. So as not to annoy the legitimate new person. I routinely use the edit button to see if there's any bb code masking links.

You could make your perms have the registered usergroup not be able to use bb code?

 

[Steve Freides]

But if there's a link in the post it doesn't matter font size. Perhaps I'm not understanding what you're asking.

I am using the same process as you. But, when on my phone, the tiny font a person used for adding links to their post simply escaped my eye, and I approved the post, only to have a member let me know, via our Report function, that they were pretty sure I'd approved a spammer.

Maybe no bb code, if I can do that, is a solution ...

-S-

 

[rdn]

Andy has an addon that can disable certain bbcodes like that.