OT- Anti-spam filter on board

HW has been getting bombed with spam. In a given day the mods can ban spammers and delete approximately 300 posts (at least!) The spam filter can be annoying but it's better then having to go thru pages of junk.

I can't remember what the spam timer was because admin has changed it a couple times. But the spam is site wide but primarily strikes Allergies/Asthma and some of the less monitored forums. This spam has been a real nightmare and a pain. The mods and admin have been dealing with this for quite some time now. And every effort is being done to protect the forums from these trolls and spambots.

Believe it or not, that really wouldn't help. The bots sign on and post as fast as possible; some of them were posting hundreds of messages an hour.

We've had mods staying up at night deleting 600 or more posts, then we got up early morning and found three or four pages of spam on multiple forums. There are about five of us who have spent hundreds of hours deleting spam at night. We get up in the morning and see hundreds of new names registered that we know are spam from the names.

Believe me, this is a small price to pay for being able to find the real posts on the board.

How about introducing a question on the registration form that only humans would know the answer to? Captchas are useless - most spambots have been programmed to 'solve' those. Questions and answers are better for foiling them.

"Anti-spam filter duration is 60 seconds. I can certainly make 3 posts in that period."


it takes me that long to figure out if I should be using regime, regimen, or regiment -

and don't even get me going on chromes !

The forum admin has a full time job and family. He owns and administers this site in his "free" time, and is not a full-time paid administrator. I guess that's why we don't have to pay to join. At the same time, there's a limit to how much time and money is available to add things to the site.

You certainly can send your suggestions directly to him to see if they help. Many heads are sometimes better than a few.

Judy2 said...
The forum admin has a full time job and family. He owns and administers this site in his "free" time, and is not a full-time paid administrator. I guess that's why we don't have to pay to join. At the same time, there's a limit to how much time and money is available to add things to the site.

You certainly can send your suggestions directly to him to see if they help. Many heads are sometimes better than a few.

It would take hardly more than a few minutes to add a question to the registration form, nor would it cost a cent to do so. All you need is access to the forum files, which the adminstrator should have.

Hell, I'd do it myself if I could be given root access for half an hour. But yeah, let's face it, that's not going to happen.