Message to DaVita Staff: How to stop spam

[angieskidney]

To whom ever this concerns:

Since this is an issue that has upset a lot of members and the type of spam seen, I felt it necessary to share this. I hope this is taken as it is meant.

Don't Give Them What They Want

Firstly. As the Admin you owe it to your regular board members to take as many precautions as you can not to subject them to the abuse of these spammers. As well as the obvious p0rn risks, these links often point to sites containing malicious code, viruses, spyware, malware and other nasties.
If your visitors catch a virus from one of these sites, all they will remember is they caught it from YOU. After all, it was your site they visited last.

Think Like the Spammer


You'll never stop spam on your board until you understand what the spammer wants. You have to think like the spammers to beat them. What do they want? Well that's simple, they want to place links into their profiles on your forum. It doesn't matter to them if they do that as a Validating Member, a Full Member or even a Banned Member. As long as they've posted the link, it can be read by search engine spiders and they've won. Remove the ability for them to place those links and 90% of your troubles are over. Again, the solutions can be remarkably simple.

1) Don't allow "Guests" to post, or if you really must allow them to post, don't let them post links or images.
2) Use a "Captcha" during the registration process. I know many will say that modern bots can read Captchas, but it still stops a lot.
3) Use "Email Verification" during the registration process. Many spammers try fake emails first and won't be able to answer the verification mail. This stops a lot more.
Now for the ones that do get through registration.
4) Don't allow them to enter links into their profiles during the registration process, especially while they are in the verifying stage. Remember, if a spammer has entered his link even BEFORE he has answered his verification email, he HAS STILL entered the link. It doesn't matter to him that he isn't (or never will be) a member, he has already achieved what he set out to do.
5) In fact, don't allow them to have ANY access to their profile during registration. Check to see how much freedom you do allow them during registration.
6) Put all successful registrations into a special "Newbie" group and don't allow that group to post links or have any access to their profile until they have posted 'x' number of proper posts. Once the Newbie has posted the number of posts you chose as a buffer, he can be automatically advanced to the normal member group with all the permissions you normally attribute to that group. If a new member is genuinely interested in your board, he won't be put off by this small precaution.
Personally, I use:
Newbies (totally restricted) for the first five posts (not even access to their profile).
Members (semi restricted) for the next fifteen posts (more relaxed posting, but still no access to the profile).
Advanced Members who have proved themselves and have full posting rights and profile access.
And if you add "posts must be validated by a moderator first" to the Newbies group, then you will have conquered pretty much ALL of your spam.

Banning Members and Deleting Offensive Posts


This has already been covered but it's worth a final mention. If a spammer has already managed to place a link into a post or into his profile, it doesn't matter to him if you move his post to a hidden spam forum or if you ban him. A banned group is still a member group of your forum and a hidden spam forum is still a forum (even if the public can't see it). His links can still be read by search engine spiders so he's achieved what he set out to do, which basically is to fool you.
All you need to do to beat this final hurdle is to strip out any links from his profile before banning him. The same applies to posts you want to keep, strip out the links.

Conclusion

An admin who leaves links in the profile of a banned spammer is as bad as the spammer himself. Firstly, you can be sure that word will get around that your board is an easy target, which will only increase the number of spammers you have to deal with. But worst still, by not stripping out the links you are helping to make it harder for the rest of us.
Admins have the ability to completely stop these link spammers and I have no sympathy for those who don't use that ability. Link spamming will never stop all the time that you hand them what they want on a plate.

This was posted from: http://spamhammer.oxyhost.com/fight_back.html


I hope this helps anyone with the power to put a stop (not just deleting posts) spammers, understand the spam threat better.



Thank you.

[angieskidney]

What is spam?

I found this link really helpful. It is the phpBB help forums thread on stopping spam. Very useful information for anyone who is curious about what spam can and cannot do, and for staff who want to see if there is more than can do to rectify this problem.

I know that you guys are on top of this but I just ran across this while helping someone else out with phpBB forums so I thought I would share it here:

http://www.phpbb.com/community/viewt...st=0&sk=t&sd=a

[Fauxreal]

If a young upstart can comment on this as well - I'm actually an Omni-Moderator on an avatar website, forum based....

And I completely agree!!!

[angieskidney]

It was hard for me to know the forum type but I realize now that this forum is not php but vBulletin®.

Tips for how to prevent spam on that forum type here:

How to Reduce Spam and Registration Bots

How do I prevent spam bots from registering?

Better spam control?

Spammer using PM system to spam

I put that last one in because I just got a spam PM (again!)...


Also all emails ending in @mail.ru should always be banned. I noticed a huge amount of the spammers are from Russia.

[FMBK]

Thanks for doing this, Angie. I hope the moderators take note.....

[angieskidney]

Originally Posted by FMBK

Thanks for doing this, Angie. I hope the moderators take note.....

You are welcome! Yeah they say they are working on it but considering my forums get absolutely no spam anymore at all, I tend to think I know a lot of resources and try to help. I just hope I am not being too pushy lol.