Spammer attacking forums

[Delta3D]

For the past 2 days we've been getting hit with spammers on our forums. We have a security question that users have to answer when registering that a bot won't be able to answer because it's not a math question. So my guess is someone's bypassing it by either registering manually or something.

They keep posting in one specific language (not english) and we ban their IPs manually.

Any suggestions how to fight this? Anyone have any experience they can share and what they've done?

 

[whynot]

We have a security question that users have to answer when registering that a bot won't be able to answer because it's not a math question.
...
Any suggestions how to fight this?

One security question?
You should have more of them and change them regularly.
One human spammer finds the answer and then :
He sends his BOTS and/or let other spammers know the answer.

 

[teletubbi]

There are plenty of possibilities to avoid this.

Moderate the first 5 or 10 post from new members.
Make use of blocking some email provider for registration.
Make use of blocking ip's from countrys you normaly don't have members in
Use the spam management of xenforo and set it up accordingly . You can use there also phrases they often post even in different languages.

Look at this addon.

https://xenforo.com/community/resources/tpu-detect-and-block-spam-registrations.2973/

 

[ManagerJosh]

And be sure to add the additional add-on: https://xenforo.com/community/resources/tpu-detect-spam-registrations-javascript.2974/

 

[Delta3D]

Thanks for the suggestions. I checked some of those links, but haven't been able to find one feature I am looking for -- I am trying to change the settings so that new members cannot post links in their first post. How can I go about doing this and issue a notification to the user that they need at least X posts to be able to post links?

 

[James]

https://xenforo.com/community/resources/block-spam-completely-with-no-addons.4065/

 

[Delta3D]

https://xenforo.com/community/resources/block-spam-completely-with-no-addons.4065/

I've read that and it says how to add the notice for the user, but where do you set the actual option to prevent adding links until user reaches X posts?

 

[James]

Set up the spam phrase as it states in the first paragraph.

 

[StarArmy]

Also, set up your StopForumSpam API key and configure your XenForo to use it. It's a great resource.