Spam Post / Topic Flood Prevention / Protection

ProCom

ProCom

Well-known member
We've had a few cases where spammers slip by our anti-spam systems and then post 80 new threads (most recently all in foreign characters like Chinese / Japanese) and I thought some basic flood prevention for new members would be good.

XF has some basic "flood protection" as shown here:
https://xenforo.com/community/threads/bypass-flood-check.52260/

Instead of just "minimum time between messages" I was hoping there would also be an additional option "until the user has x verified / approved posts".

I'm guessing the only option is to:
  1. Setup a brand new usergroup called "new users"
  2. Setup a promotion out of that group and into "bypass flood check"
  3. Set the "minimum time between posts" to something higher, like 60 seconds or more?
Even this isn't ideal since it hurts new members and still leaves things open for spammers.

So, what do you do for Post / Topic flood protection to stop the dirty spammers from posting a ton of junk on your forum?
 
I've been hit by the same group of spammers, but I was on vB when they hit last week so my options were different. Limiting the number of posts they could make in a short amount of time was key. Now that I moved over to Xenforo, the built in features are working pretty well to keep them in check.

This is what I am doing:
When they register, they are in a group of people with zero posts that have very limited permissions. I set up a promotion so that they are moved to a group with 1-10 posts next. This helps the legitimate new members because most of these spammers will get caught and banned while they are still in the "zero posts" group. The second 1-10 posts group is still limited, but not as much as the zero posts group. Finally, they move into a basic registered group that has all of the basic permissions. Once a member has been around for at least 30 days and has posted 50 posts, they get moved to yet another group that has special privileges.
 
That's one of my favorite and most helpful addons. It's definitely kept most spammers from registering, but when some slip through, they can get pretty bad, which is why flood prevention is my next step. I just wish I didn't have to setup an intermediate "new-user" user group and setup promotions to accomplish it.
 
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