Spam tips please

[Alvin63]

So on one of my forums I've been getting a lot of spammers picked up by the spam filter for the past few months. Which is good that the spam filter gets them and they don't get onto the forum. But sometimes it's 15 to 20 every few hours and it gets tedious rejecting them all manually.

Is there a quicker way to do it? Additionally I've started getting "Mail not delivered" notifications in the contact us email. Where someone has tried to sign up with an indecipherable username and the undelivered mail is the password reset email.

 

[javakhir]

chnage user states to email confirm & put image captcha

 

[CedricV]

Do you have Cloudflares Turnstile turned on?

Cloudflare Turnstile | CAPTCHA Replacement Solution

Cloudflare Turnstile is a simple and free CAPTCHA replacement solution that delivers better experiences and greater security for your users.

www.cloudflare.com

 

[javakhir]

if you knew ability of XEvil that works with Xrumer software spammers use, you would stop suggesting any third party & paid captcha.
lol

 

[CedricV]

if you knew ability of XEvil that works with Xrumer software spammers use, you would stop suggesting any third party & paid captcha.
lol

I've been using Turnstile for free. Never had to pay for it.

 

[philmckrackon]

I use Turnstile and a carefully worded custom required registration question that requires a zip code. I do not use a numerical example so a bot cannot extract an answer from the web page. It also uses regex for evaluation. The only spammer I ever have is human and it's around one a month.

 

[javakhir]

you definitely were not spammed by professionals! when you rich million posts, you will get them!

 

[philmckrackon]

you definitely were not spammed by professionals! when you rich million posts, you will get them!

I may not have millions of posts, but do have an excellent Google ranking and until I added that question even with Turnstile there were dozens of spam regs per day.

 

[CedricV]

you definitely were not spammed by professionals! when you rich million posts, you will get them!

That really depends on the kind of niche you run and traffic, not the amount of posts. You'll see that a business forum tends to have much more spammers than a basketball forum.

 

[Alvin63]

Ok thanks all - I didn't quite follow all that.

chnage user states to email confirm & put image captcha

Whose user state? I think I already have image captcha.

Do you have Cloudflares Turnstile turned on?

Cloudflare Turnstile | CAPTCHA Replacement Solution

Cloudflare Turnstile is a simple and free CAPTCHA replacement solution that delivers better experiences and greater security for your users.

www.cloudflare.com

I do use Cloudflare but am not aware that is turned on so I'll check.

Do I have two separate issues here?

1) The number of spammers filtered out by the spam filter that need deleting each day
2) The undelivered emails coming to the forum email with usernames like a string of letters (this has only just started).

With issue 2 I'm trying to work out what is happening - presumably they try to sign up but the activation email isn't delivered because there's no email address?

 

[Alvin63]

Ok I had a look at Cloudflare turnstile. It's when you get that cloudflare page that says tick to show you're human? Would that happen every time someone tried to access the site page, or just when they first try to sign up?

 

[Alvin63]

I may not have millions of posts, but do have an excellent Google ranking and until I added that question even with Turnstile there were dozens of spam regs per day.

So you use turnstile as well as the question? I don't think Uk users would want to put their postcode in.

 

[philmckrackon]

 

[philmckrackon]

So you use turnstile as well as the question? I don't think Uk users would want to put their postcode in.

Per the instructions they can enter any numbers.

 

[Alvin63]

Looking at the turnstile page, but what does "add a widget" mean?

 

[Alvin63]

How about Google Recaptcha?

 

[Alvin63]

Per the instructions they can enter any numbers.

Ok so could it be a word? Like what is the topic of this site?

 

[Alvin63]

Ok I just tested the mail undelivered scenario by signing up with a fake email not@not.com. So that must be what they're doing. This seems more like just troublemaking than spam! Surely spammers would use an actual email address?

 

[zappaDPJ]

I generally just use a single custom Q&A that is niche applicable such as 'What does the 'P' stand for in FTTP?'. Anyone joining that particular forum will know the answer and I get no spam, none. On a couple of forums I do also employ some region blocking by IP but I wouldn't recommend that unless you are offering a region specific service.

I would not use an image CAPTCHA because they are a deterrent to potential members but are solvable to an ever increasing degree by AI.

 

[Alvin63]

Yes I also find image captcha's annoying. Is this default in Xenforo as I have it. Assume I can turn it off somewhere? (HCaptcha). I like the idea of a question and answer. Assume I'd have to set that up myself - any tips on how to do that would be appreciated!

Cloudflare turnstile looks a little complicated to set up (for me). There is another site I visit that has that and I find that annoying too as you have to sit and wait looking at a Cloudflare page and can't even see the webpage. At least with the Captcha you can still see the web page. Seems captcha isn't that effective anyway.

Edit: That other site must be doing something different as I can now see turnstile doesn't do that!