Help - My forum is being spammed

[k2zs]

I finally decided on phpBB for our club forum and everything has been fine for the last month but this week we had someone join who made an innocent post to our guestbook and then a post to another topic about Anime. I removed the post, warned the user, and banned them. I guess that ticked the off because the next night they flooded our forum with 4 new user accounts all posting spam.

I locked down the forum to moderate new user accounts and see that they are trying every night with 2-3 new account attempts. Whois reports all the attempts are from 2 different networks from China. Can I use the reported "abuse" email provided of should I keep my mouth shut and chalk it up to learning experience?

Now I feel your pain Lisa....

[lisa]

Yeah it's no fun.

Does PHPBB allow you to add on any anti spam plugins? Can you ban the IP addreses? I am currently running 3 different anti spam plugins...

1) CheckSpam (vbulletin plugin)
2) RE-CAPTCHA (comes with vbulletin)
3) Project Honeypot

That has really helped the bot spam. Of course they do nothing for the manual spam but the bot spam is much more destructive and annoying.

[k2zs]

Hi Lisa and thanks for your reply. I was so frustrated this morning and I didn't really look at the available settings in my installation. After I made my post here this morning I went through the admin section and found a setting that will check the users IP against the SpamCop and SpamHaus DNSBL services on registration as well as posting. That was off so I put it to on. It seems to be part of phpbb because it didn't say I had to install anything so I will see if it happens again tonight. I opened it back up for registration because I am sure it will happen tonight. I want to see if it works.. Perhaps there are some phpBB 3.0.5 admins that could give me some pointers.

Boy, this has only happened 3 days in a row and it has me frustrated. If this is going to be a non stop occurrence now they'll be haulin me out of here in a straight jacket in no time flat...lol.

[lisa]

Originally Posted by k2zs

Hi Lisa and thanks for your reply. I was so frustrated this morning and I didn't really look at the available settings in my installation. After I made my post here this morning I went through the admin section and found a setting that will check the users IP against the SpamCop and SpamHaus DNSBL services on registration as well as posting. That was off so I put it to on. It seems to be part of phpbb because it didn't say I had to install anything so I will see if it happens again tonight. I opened it back up for registration because I am sure it will happen tonight. I want to see if it works.. Perhaps there are some phpBB 3.0.5 admins that could give me some pointers.

Boy, this has only happened 3 days in a row and it has me frustrated. If this is going to be a non stop occurrence now they'll be haulin me out of here in a straight jacket in no time flat...lol.

LOL, give it some time before you go straight jacket shopping. Hopefully your changes will help you out. I figured there had to be some kind of setting or plugin available to help you combat spam.

I would also recommend googling something like "PHPBB forum spam" or something like that to see how other people are handling it. (If you haven't already).

[Kato]

This is the reason that all registrations go through my approval before before being accepted. And yes, spam bots are the worst. Yes, it definitely requires my being hands on regarding any registration that comes through... which means more work for me. But I wouldn't have it any other way.

There's always going to be something about them that I can tell as to whether they are legit or not.

[k2zs]

Yea, It seems to come and go as far as the bogus registrations goes. It was quiet for most of the weekend and then there were 3 today. I always check the "whois" and most of the spammers are coming from China. I placed a note on the front page that tells people that a call sign (it's a ham radio forum) is required as the user name. Like you, I have closed instant registration and have to moderate all new registrants. So far I haven't heard any complaints so I'll leave it that way. Unfortunately none of the appointed moderators are pitching in...

Originally Posted by Kato

This is the reason that all registrations go through my approval before before being accepted. And yes, spam bots are the worst. Yes, it definitely requires my being hands on regarding any registration that comes through... which means more work for me. But I wouldn't have it any other way.

There's always going to be something about them that I can tell as to whether they are legit or not.

[lisa]

When I research my troublemaking IP's 99% of them are from China.

[awjm]

I have used many different forum software ... i find that vBulletin and SMF has the best spam fighting tools ... on the other hand, vBulletin and SMF are widely used and spam bots target them heavily, so if you don't have the right spam blockers installed you'll be getting spam accounts by the 100's

I'm now using SMF and Spam is basically down to 0 due to a few mods im using...

Built in CAPTCHA [Works, but only seems to annoy actual people than stopping bots]
Stop Forum Spam [This stops 80% of spammers, as it checks the email and username with the StopForumSpam.com database]
Anti Bot: Are You Human/Bot? [Soon bots will learn how to bypass this, but for now it's working]

All and all, bots get smarter everyday, and the human bots seem to be on the rise as well we just have to monitor and constantly use the best and latest spam-stoppers.