vBulletin and forum spam

[administrator]

An iBot earlier in the year created 1000's of accounts on CUK over a three month period. None of them actually posted and so didn;t require moderation. I did point out a number of posters recently to Admin where it was obvious that the moderators had let some iBots posts through and a check of IP Addresses resulted in a ban.

I think the trade off is to include a manual step to stop blatant spam, so surely most forums are going to be similar.

To say the mods let some iBots through is not perhaps the best way to put it The accounts were created from a UK home ISP I think and probably made a few "real" posts to get through the moderation system. Very far removed from the automated accounts that were being set up around Xmas last year. There is no way to guard against real people signing up to a forum, making a few "I agree" type posts and then adding some links in later when they see they can post without moderation.

We do a lot on here to stop the spam getting through and really cracked it with the addition of an answer being needed to a question on sign up. If the automated account creators work out that question and I see accounts being created again then I can amend it.

We use Captcha on sign up, accounts cannot even sign in until an email verification link has been clicked on, new users cannot post without myself or the mods approving their initial few posts. Akismet does sound very good so would definitely go with that if possible. Not used PHPBB for a few years but it does look like a lot of the things we have in place on here are possible with PHPBB too so just a few tweaks can really help reduce the spam.

[VectraMan]

Thanks. Akismet for PHPBB sounds like a good not-too-much-work solution for this.

[MarillionFan]

Admin does an excellent job keeping out the worst of the spam. And moderating the 1st 5 posts keeps the ibots out.

The mods just review the moderated posts and validate or delete as needs be. I check 1st thing of a morning and at lunchtime.

An iBot earlier in the year created 1000's of accounts on CUK over a three month period. None of them actually posted and so didn;t require moderation. I did point out a number of posters recently to Admin where it was obvious that the moderators had let some iBots posts through and a check of IP Addresses resulted in a ban.

I think the trade off is to include a manual step to stop blatant spam, so surely most forums are going to be similar.

[cojak]

Admin does an excellent job keeping out the worst of the spam. And moderating the 1st 5 posts keeps the ibots out.

The mods just review the moderated posts and validate or delete as needs be. I check 1st thing of a morning and at lunchtime.

[Sysman]

I've had excellent results with Akismet and Wordpress - only 1 spam got through in more than 2 years.

Akismet now has phpbb integration.

It's free for personal use, but costs for commercial use. Pricing. Note that they class low traffic sites as below 100K calls a month-

On the vBulletin front, a site I used to use delegated a function to kill a spammer and all associated posts to a few trusted posters for round-the-clock coverage.

[VectraMan]

I've been asked about ways to limit the number of spammers that seem to register and post on a phpbb forum, and whether vBulletin is a worthwhile alternative. I know vBulletin is a pretty popular alternative, but are the anti-spam measures really any different/better?

What does this forum do? Is there some clever scheme, or is it just that our mods are the greatest (and more importantly can spend all day watching the forum when they should be working).

Thanks for any advice. The whole thing is a PITA, and this is for an organisation that certainly can't afford to have anyone looking after the forum full time.