Spammer postings.

Just a quickie for our moderators or the more IT literate out there.
Any ideas why the forum seems to be getting absolutley hammered with spammers lately. Looking at the members list we have taken nearly 130 new registrations since beginning of feb, yet only a couple seem legit ( Burnsy + Dade being the only real ones i can see, but apologies if ive missed anyone else).
Is it something peculiar to our forum software, or just bad luck.
Ive not noticed this level of invasion on any other forum i use.

Yeah it's a ball ache. I reckon I delete about 8 - 10 spam postings a day.

We really need to change the rules on sign up so that it's a bit more difficult to sign up (sign up, receive email to confirmed address, click on link etc.).

It would also be useful to make a rule that anyone who has not posted can't start a new topic until they have at least one reply under their belt.

I also believe it may be possible in PHP to sort this but have no idea how.

Angelo........... ????

What would be involved in coverting the site to a VB forum? None of the 4 or 5 that i visit ever seem to have any bother with spammers, other than the resident keyboard warriors with a point to prove about nothing in particular...

Was there not a proposal by a member to impliment an additional bit of script that would deter the buggers?

RideKTM posted this link a while ago....

i think its mostly due to sign up with no activation needed.
it makes an easy target.

Gents,

I do your 'night shift' from Aus. I do about 3 to 10 a day as well.
I guess in total we are getting a few; prob well worth a change to signup.

Also, Angelo,

Are you able to provide the Moderators with rights to delete ID's.
If we see a user with 1 post only & it is spam - we can delete that ID.
That would help repeated offenses and tidy up total users.

Plus a no-use revalidation would be good too.
It, delete ID is not used in Xmths.

Cheers,
Greg

Gregz,

Good point regarding deleting spammers id..... but ive yet to see repeated offenders... just seem to post the once and thats that,so a different sign up process would seeem to be the way to stop them in the first place...... last few days have been rather active regarding spam though.....


could be that getting on to a third of members are there for spammng purposes only........... dont think there are that many superdukes about

mornin' gents,

i delete about 4-8 spams a day also, usually in the early morning shift

as i'm up to it in work at the moment, will have to contact you guys over the weekend to discuss different sign-up options as Glen is right, seems to be mainly one-time offenders and then they disappear... god knows how many user IDs i've deleted, it's a tedious process and i just gave up after a while, seemed easier to delete spams as they appear than pre-emptively delete users....

speak over the weekend?

Thanks Angelo,

Good to see we are all doing our shifts! Yeah - it is a tough decision to work.
My veiw is if we can all chip in - it will make life much easier. A stitch in time saves nine!

Anyway - leave it to you to suggest the answer Angelo

I work for a company that make content security products - like Anti-Spam. I'm not technical so not sure how we can stop these guys but I will talk to my guys and see if they have any ideas.

If we have a product that helps I'll try to acquire it