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I've found the best solution is to use a variety of strategies. We recently switched a forum from PhpBB to MyBB in the hopes that a slightly less popular platfo
by joshuahedlund 14y ago
I've found the best solution is to use a variety of strategies. We recently switched a forum from PhpBB to MyBB in the hopes that a slightly less popular platform would get less spam... we had a spam user sign up and post within 60 seconds of finishing our conversion.
However, we set up a StopForumSpam plug-in, a time-based plug-in (if you complete the registration page in < X seconds, you're probably a bot), and a custom questions plug-in, and we haven't seen any spam since. If they start figuring out to break through those walls, we'll try a few more... (On the other hand, it' s a small enough forum that I don't know if we're missing false positives.)
Yes, it's a cat and mouse game, but it's one you can generally stay on top of with minimal configuration once you understand what the spammers want and how to use your platform. And I have to admit there's some thrill involved at successfully thwarting their plans...
- lazyjones 14y agoSwitching to another "mainstream" forum software is probably in vain. We have our own software with unusual URLs, navigation, registration (requiring confirmation via e-mail) and still get a couple of spambots trying to post their shortened URLs every day, as well as obviously human spammers who try to participate in discussions for 4-5 posts, then post a few spam URLs.
- coffeeaddicted 14y agoAlso I'm pretty certain that it's a mixture of bots and humans by now. I'm using random questions currently and whenever I change them the amount of registered bots goes down for 1-2 days. Then it slowly comes up again over the week until I think up new questions. So I guess there's probably someone going over unknown questions regularly and adding new answers.