Xenforo wide spam messages

Kate

New member
We've received a couple of spam messages on our forum today. I suspected that they were spam and stuck them in to google to confirm. It looks like the same message has been posted over and over in the last 12 hours. Is there anything that can be done to stop or discourage these spammers above and beyond the normal controls?

If you're interested, the text I googled is:

Hey, admin!
Why you banned my old account?! WTF???
 
We've received a couple of spam messages on our forum today. I suspected that they were spam and stuck them in to google to confirm. It looks like the same message has been posted over and over in the last 12 hours. Is there anything that can be done to stop or discourage these spammers above and beyond the normal controls?

If you're interested, the text I googled is:

Hey, admin!
Why you banned my old account?! WTF???
Yup, been getting tons of spam accounts registered by the same IP address with this message. I'm inclined to add the IP to discouraged IP and see if that doesn't slow it down.
 
I've been seeing the same message on just about every forum I've visited in the last 12 hours including my own.


[EDIT] The same IP is also spamming this:

Did you already know about it?!​
Video with member of this forum was uploaded on YouTube!​
Its is so shoking...​
You must know about it.​
You must see it!​
It is really he - just look it carefully.​
Here is URL:​
---​
Added:​
Sorry, it was removed on YouTube!​
Uploaded video here:​
[link removed]​
So, hero...​
What you will say to your parents after that?​
 
Forgive me for my unfamiliarity with this as I'm new to managing the xenforo forum, but do you know where I can find any information on how to do this/hwo to edit the sign up process? I have created some Q&As but I can't see how to enable this.
Step 1 (set up questions): Admin control panel -> Tools -> Question and Answer CAPTCHAs -> add question
Step 2 (enable q&a captcha): Admin control panel -> Home -> Options -> User Registration -> Enable CAPTCHA for guests -> Use Question & Answer CAPTCHA -> Save Changes
 
It's most likely human spammers . Yes i banned 6accounts from that IP similar usernames similar patterns for new threads .

If that's the case, some people have WAAY too much time on their hands. Also, unless I completely miss the point of their spam-tactics, I don't understand why they would bother. Their profile doesn't link to any site or anything, so I can't quite work out what they're getting from it!
 
If that's the case, some people have WAAY too much time on their hands. Also, unless I completely miss the point of their spam-tactics, I don't understand why they would bother. Their profile doesn't link to any site or anything, so I can't quite work out what they're getting from it!
They'll come back later to edit that post when its long forgotten. Such spam has been around for ages. Usually content of such posts is something along the lines of "thank you for post, keep up good work"
 
Yup what arty said ! They usually log back in after few weeks reply around some random posts /add links to signatures .

Since my site is limited to small city so any members from Russia /india etc will be banned.
 
It's most likely human spammers . Yes i banned 6accounts from that IP similar usernames similar patterns for new threads .

Given the huge volume of spam coming from the same source I'd be very surprised if it was human on this occasion. I thought at first it was specifically targeted at XenForo but I'm now seeing the same spam across all forum platforms.
 
If that's the case, some people have WAAY too much time on their hands. Also, unless I completely miss the point of their spam-tactics, I don't understand why they would bother. Their profile doesn't link to any site or anything, so I can't quite work out what they're getting from it!

It comes back to bite you later.
 
How do you manage that? I get them constantly and they are humans, not bots. I screen each person that joins my forum doing 6 check on them and there are waves of them each day.
Create questions that aren't too obvious, so putting them in search engine won't result in answer. If you have a niche forum, its even better because you can make question that only your users would know answer to.

Example of Q&A setting used on sewing forum that I'm helping to run:

Q: Needle and ...?
A: thread

Its a niche forum, answer is obvious to visitors of that forum. Searching for question in search engine doesn't result in obvious answer. About 10k users, more than 100k posts and not a single spam post in a year.
 
The problem I am having is I know of the companies that do this. I know an easy way to create more of them. I also have an online store, when I contact manufacturers sometimes I never hear back from them but then someone starts posting about the company I tried to contact to buy inventory. I dig and find out they are from the manufacturer I contacted the week before. All of it isn't like this but quite a bit of it is.
 
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