XF 1.5 Spammers (Spambots or Human Spamming)

[kc dash]

Hello,

We are new to Xenforo and forums in general. We have been hit hard in the last few days with spamming on our forum. I am not sure how to tell if it is bots or human spamming, but it got out of hand and I am trying to find out how we fix this and stop it in the future.

Is there a way to block spambots and spammers in general on our forum? What can we do to stop this from happening in the future? And what should we do now that we have been hit by this?

Thank you for any recommendations!

 

[vbuser]

You could moderate new members or install a spam plugin from the resources section. You’ll have to set up a promotion rule if you moderate. To moderate: admin cp > users > list users groups > registered > follow message moderation rules > no

 

[kc dash]

Thank you very much!

So, if we set up the 'follow message moderation rule' to no, then we would have to moderate and approve each message posted?

Also, what spam l=plugin does everyone recommend for this in the resource section?

Thank you!

 

[Martok]

So, if we set up the 'follow message moderation rule' to no, then we would have to moderate and approve each message posted?

Yes, you would have to moderate and approve each message. However, you then set up another user group in which you set the 'follow message moderation rule' to Yes and then create a user group promotion, for example 'User has posted at least X messages' is set to 5. So when a new user has had 5 approved messages (note they have to be approved ones, so they can't just spam 5 or more messages to be able to post freely) they will be automatically promoted to the new group and can then post without moderation.

I don't use any spam plugins at all, I find the ones built into XenForo to be sufficient. It might be worth you reviewing the basic spam management you have set up (and whether you are using ReCAPTCHA or Q&A for registrations) to see if that's been set up properly first.

 

[kc dash]

Thank you both very much. This is just what we needed to research and put in place. Thanks!