Spam Protection In VB

Hi guys. I have a webmaster forum powered by vbulletin. Every day I got only members that come to my forum and spam it with messages like "Buy Viagra" , "Buy cheap games" and stuff like that. I loose lot of time deleting their posts and I don't want to do that anymore.

Can you tell me some methods to stop those spammers ? Thanks.

 

Enable CAPTCHA so that they need to enter the characters in the box before they can register. That will stop the bots from registering.

Enable email verification so that they need to use a valid email address and click the link in the email before they can post.

That should stop them.

 

Use Recaptcha..

 

Set it to admin approval only silly

 

Starting with VBulletin 3.7 ReCaptcha is a built in feature. Sign up for a free account at recaptcha.com and enable recapthca in the VBulletin control panel. Its under the human verification options in the left column. To the new spam bots, the classic captcha is nothing. Even with email activation turned on the new spam bots sign up by the dozens.

Besides ReCapthca there are also some question and answer options built into Vbulletin. You could set up a series of questions, like "what is 2+2" and the person would have to enter 4 or four. But you have to set up every question and answer yourself. This can be a little time consuming. Plus, for every question, you have to think of every possible answer the person might enter.

There is an image verification modification at vbulletin.org. You can upload several images, then ask the person to click a certain image when they register.

Out of everything, for me ReCaptcha was the easiest to get going and so far has been the best at keeping the spam bots out.

 

I already have all those settings available...

 

Ban their ip address when you ban them.

 

Use a question and answer at signup...

 

I think I will switch to MyBB... One more question:

How do I save the database ?

 

You have activated ReCaptcha, and your still getting spam bots? I highly doubt those are bots, its probably real people. As far as I know, the ReCapthca code has not been broken by the spam bots.

In the VBulletin user banning options, you can ban the entire network range. Lets say you have a spammer from the 121.0.0.0 network. In the user banning options of VB, ban the ip range with this option - 121.*.*.* and nobody from the 121 network will be able to register an account. The * is a variable.

And if your using question a answer session when members register, its impossible for bots to read and know the answers to the questions.

How big is the database?

If the database is just a couple of megs, you could use the export database option from Cpanel or the vb control panel.

If the database is over a couple of hundred megs you could use mysqldumper or command line. Once the database gets close to a gig, I have had problems with mysqldumper timing out.

If the database is over a gig, you may need to use command line or a database backup modification from vbulletin.org by Paul M.

PHP scripts have a time out. So if your trying to back up a large database using cpanel, or the database backup in VB, the script will time out.

As for switching to mybb - mybb is good software, but it does not compare to VB.

 

Captcha is the solution of your problem.

 

The new spam bots have broken the Captcha code. Its just about useless against the newest bots.

My wifes, daughters and sons forum all used captcha and all of them were getting 4, 5 and 6 spammers a day. And this is with email activation for new members turned on. The spam bots broke through captcha, created an account, and then activated the account using the link in their email.

Once I installed ReCaptcha the spammers stopped.

 

Some degree of spamming is inevitable - humans can be spammers too.

If you haven't dumped vBulletin yet (which would be a mistake in my opinion) and you've looked in to the previous suggestions, have a look through the vBulletin.org add-ons as there are heaps of different options for catching spam.

I've used the vBulletin Prevent Spam add-on (http://www.vbulletin.org/forum/showthread.php?t=131568) and it works for me. It puts the posts with certain keywords (or URLs) in to a moderation queue. It doesn't prevent spammers from posting however it does stop their posts from making their way on to the site for members to see.