Spam management

[jellytoe]

Fighting the spammers can be a never-ending battle that ebbs and flows. I've got the honeypot key and stopforumspam going. I have TAC stophumanspam. I have new threads limited to 5 per 24 hours so no spammer gets more then 5 in. I'd like to limit new threads even more for new members but haven't seen a method or add-on to do so. I have 10 members/mods with access to the spam cleaner. We are having to clean about 5 spam incidents per day. Some get caught in moderation because I have spam phrases in stophumanspam.

Is Akismet worth the $5 a month? They say 75k monthly checks. Does Xenforo check only on new registrations or are there other processes that will check the Akismet database?

I get a lot of the vashikaran/love marriage solution crap as well as the health/suppliments/nonsense.

Any more advice on how to get rid of these no-good varmits?

 

[Anthony Parsons]

I have TAC stophumanspam

If you have this set correctly, with a healthy minimum post limit before they can get past it, then you shouldn't be getting anything, as it detects sneaky URL's as well.

Set your posts to like 50 before any link can be posted. I don't even use banned words in posts... and this thing catches 99.9% of crap. I have pages every day of people still trying to get past this... maybe one here and there gets by it, and thats it.

I only use XF honeypot in combination with this... it does the job effectively.





If you want to go a step further, give users over x posts access to a moderation points add-on... I don't remember where it is, but I have it and users with hundreds of posts are auto added to a user group, with this specific add-on when they report a post it puts it into moderation... thus you have members working for you if there are no staff online.

When spammers see there stuff disappear near instantly, they stop spamming you and move on to easier targets.

 

[jellytoe]

Thanks for your response. I have StopHumanSpam setup just like that. These spammers aren't posting URLs.

 

[jellytoe]

I've attached the text of one of the types of spammers I have. They post this kind of babble daily, but it's always something a little different. No URL...

 

[Anthony Parsons]

You should be able to isolate them by IP and ban them via XF ACP IP ban.

 

[ForestForTrees]

I find IP numbers very helpful in spam management, too. I tend to block them at the registration phase.

Whenever I notice a significant increase in spam, I turn manual approval of new accounts on and then block all untrusted ASNs using TPU: detect spam registrations. It doesn't take long before the spammers get tired of being reported and give up. Spammers are just smart enough to give up when faced with someone who will literally let no spam through.

Basically, it seems that spammers work in teams. The following ASN belongs to the Philippine Long Distance Telephone Company, who attempted to spam me a lot in the past. Even if they switch ASNs with a VPN they won't get far because I know most of the ASNs that real users use (comcast, verizon, sky, etc.), so any other ASN gets special scrutiny. The message I try to send is that while they might occasionally get a message through, they will lose money on my site. They realize this eventually and then my job gets much easier again.