Spam Prevention - Other Solutions

[Liam C.]

Hi there

We've had a number of spam users enter our site and post links either leading to scam, inappropriate or malicious websites.

We're currently in the process in building a bespoke addon that allows a "domain whitelist", essentially whenever a user tries to specify a specific domain, it would show an error claiming that they cannot send this. This would be extending both thread and post entities, and having user criteria so we can target specific users to exclude our community members from being targeted by this addon.

However, we would like to explore other options in order to automate prevention with these cases before finalising this addon, which has roughly 2-3 weeks due to it being a low priority. We are likely still going to add this addon to our site, but my primary question is to ask the Xenforo community of your way on handling these issues before adding our own.

 

[frpsucre]

question do they register and post spam?

 

[motowebmaster]

I used to use a popular addon that was very effective, but when XF made the Cloudflare Turnstile option available the addon wasn't catching spam registrations anymore, so I removed it. Today I utilize just the XF standard features for spam management. Might catch a handful of manual spammer registrations per month, if any.

Also utilize a few well-known blocklists in my firewall, and block three countries where the majority of bots are operating from.

Andy's addon that prunes profiles with zero posts is also useful. They used to be a source of spammer posts.

Hope this helps,

 

[Suzanne O]

@Xon's Sign up and abuse addon plus his standard library addon is awesome.

 

[woody]

Moderate new posts, anything with a link gets put in the que.

 

[Levina]

Moderate new posts, anything with a link gets put in the que.

That's what I do. I have a spam phrase for external links for the first 5 posts of a member, regardless of when they joined.

 

[ES Dev Team]

I use the integrated stopforumspam with some fine tuned settings and a custom Q&A captcha that gets rotated every once and a while.
Works well!

scammers/spammers quite often use gmail accounts and such so it's hard for a blacklist to add efficacy to your filtering.

 

[Levina]

I use the integrated stopforumspam with some fine tuned settings and a custom Q&A captcha that gets rotated every once and a while.
Works well!

scammers/spammers quite often use gmail accounts and such so it's hard for a blacklist to add efficacy to your filtering.

I had a lot of spam registrations and although most all were caught in the spamfilters it was annoying having to deal with them in the approval queue on an almost daily basis. This summer I switched to a Q&A captcha that until now the spambots have been unable to crack. It's simple as can be for humans, but apparently not so for spambots. My approval queue has been blissfully empty ever since.

 

[Zwielicht]

Moderate new posts, anything with a link gets put in the que.

This is what I do as well. I have a Registered+ usergroup that members get automatically added to after meeting a certain criteria. This way, those only in the Regstered usergroup will have any posts with external links automatically added to the approval queue.

I also have manual approvals turned on for my forum. This isn't as tedious as you would think as I've managed to block most spam sign-ups.

 

[smallwheels]

However, we would like to explore other options in order to automate prevention with these cases before finalising this addon

Did you search the forums and the add ons section? Threre are countless threads about the topic already and also a small set of recommended add ons as well as best practices, some of them already mentioned in this thread. I use the registration spaminator and login spaminator by @Ozzy47 (which reliably block automated signup-attempts) as one tool upon others and had no more issues with spammer registrations since installing them.

 

[frpsucre]

Did you search the forums and the add ons section? Threre are countless threads about the topic already and also a small set of recommended add ons as well as best practices, some of them already mentioned in this thread. I use the registration spaminator and login spaminator by @Ozzy47 (which reliably block automated signup-attempts) as one tool upon others and had no more issues with spammer registrations since installing them.

 

[frpsucre]

View attachment 329673

 

[smallwheels]

View attachment 329673

What Do you want to say with your no-word post? It is no news that @Ozzy47 demanded his add ons to be delisted from this forum due to a beef with staff here a couple of months ago but it is also no news that they are developed and supported further and also sold further via his own website - as it has been since the middle ages.

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