XF 2.2 Spam and new member Issues

[captainmatt29]

We currently have Akismet and StopForumSpam enabled, and we're using Cloudflare Turnstile for CAPTCHA. While these tools are active and working, we're still seeing spam accounts slip through. These users are posting content that includes links to casinos, cannabis-related sites, and other promotional material that we do not allow on the forum.

Is there a way to get ahead of this, for example by having any post, profile update, or bio that includes certain keywords or promotional links either blocked or sent to moderation for approval before it's visible to the public?

Ideally, we would prefer to prevent these users from registering altogether, but they seem to be real people using legitimate email providers like Gmail, which makes automatic detection harder.

 

[Paul B]

Is there a way to get ahead of this, for example by having any post, profile update, or bio that includes certain keywords or promotional links either blocked or sent to moderation for approval before it's visible to the public?

Spam phrases.

Spam prevention | Manual | XenForo

End-user documentation for XenForo

xenforo.com

 

[captainmatt29]

Spam phrases.

Spam prevention | Manual | XenForo

End-user documentation for XenForo

xenforo.com

Thanks Paul!

I wasn't 100% sure how effective that would be but i have set it up now.

 

[captainmatt29]

Unfortunately, this issue is still ongoing accounts are managing to bypass all configured spam protections by registering with gmail.com addresses. They're able to confirm their emails and update their profiles with spammy, messy content. So far today, we've had 32 of these, all with betting and casino-style profiles.

The spam phrases section I've set up also doesn’t seem to be blocking the content from appearing in profile comments either

I need a solution that prevents these accounts from being created in the first place.

Also, once I manually ban or mark these accounts as spam, is there a way to completely hide or remove them from visibility? Even after being locked out, the accounts are still publicly visible, which defeats part of the purpose.

As a side note, I’ve been manually submitting these to StopForumSpam, but that’s turning into a major time sink.

 

[MySiteGuy]

I recommend the Spaminator add-ons from snogssite.com.