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The Joys Of Forum Spam - Manual Account Activation

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URL: https://forums.webwiz.net/forum_posts.asp?TID=26586
Printed Date: 03 April 2026 at 1:41am
Software Version: Web Wiz Forums 12.08 - https://www.webwizforums.com


Topic: The Joys Of Forum Spam - Manual Account Activation
Posted By: SnowBlind
Subject: The Joys Of Forum Spam - Manual Account Activation
Date Posted: 26 November 2008 at 4:03pm
Has anyone noticed an increase in forum spam since the e-mail spam bots have been shut down last week?  Perhaps its also the holidays also.  A lot of pump and dump signups.  I even had someone create two bogus accounts and created a fake discussion/advertisement.
 
Is there a FAQ on how to setup the forum so that users have to be manually activated?
 
Also... a cosmetic issue I just noticed today while adding IP address and e-mail address to block lists and adding words to the bad words list.  I noticed today that the Bad Words list is sorted, but the e-mail address and IP block lists are not.  It would be nice to have the IP block list sorted.  Obviously not necessary, just cosmetic.
 
Keep up the good work Web Wiz team.


Replies:
Posted By: WebWiz-Bruce
Date Posted: 26 November 2008 at 4:27pm
Best ways to block spam bots are:-

1. Make sure you have CAPTCHA security images enabled
2. Don't allow Guests to post
3. Have email activation enabled
4. If you have a spammer suspend instead of delete their account (with email activation enabled they can not signup again using the same email address)
5. You may want to enabled 'Post Approval' for the starting group on forums using the permission system. This way new signups have to have their posts approved by an admin or moderator before they are displayed live


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Posted By: SnowBlind
Date Posted: 27 November 2008 at 5:40am
Unfortunately, spam bots are no longer spam bots.  It has gotten to the point where people will work for dollars a day to sign up and post pump and dump messages via forums.  The CAPTCHA isn't very effective anymore, or, I should say, I don't have any information to really tell me if it is effective or not.  It has the appearance of not being effective, though it could be.  Same with the e-mail activation.  Its no longer very effective due to its beyond easy to create hundreds of e-mail accounts or the free e-mails (hotmail and gmail are the most common ones it seems).  I tend to delete the account and put the e-mail address in the blocked list.  The reason I delete the account is because the account itself is spam, with the URLs entered in most all the fields.  I suspect the reasoning is the more URLs back to the site then it will get indexed higher in search engines.  I also tend to put the IP address used in the block list also, though I know most of the IP address are probably proxies or zombies.  This is why I'd like to see the lists sorted, its much easier to manage when its in some logical order instead of the order that it was placed.  Something to keep in mind with the v10 development.  Especially that blogs are being worked into WebWiz, that is opening a pandoras box of spam issues.  I think I most definately will start with the 'Post Approval for new user group' method. 
 
May I suggest that in the v10 development, there are some additions to the administration.  Such as, some sort of log file viewable from the Administrator menu of logins, both successful and failed, New user signups with corresponding IP addresses.  We can make quicker and more informed decisions with this information.
 
Thanks for your time and ear Bruce.

Posted By: WebWiz-Bruce
Date Posted: 27 November 2008 at 8:45am
You are completely right and do know that people are paid peanuts per day to go around spamming.

This is why I suggested other options just not the CAPTCHA, however as it is often humans doing the spamming now the only thing you can do is put some hurdles in the way such as those I suggest so they then look for an easier target which will limit the number of spam posts. If you make it to hard to signup then no one will signup to your forum.

Web Wiz Forums already has the options you mention built in, if you really want to make it impossible for spammers to signup there are also the other extream options below you can enable:-

  • Disable all new registrations and only add new members yourself from the admin area
  • Enable Admin Account Approval from the Email Settings page in the admin area so you can vet new registrations and decide if you want them to go live
  • Edit the includes/setup_options_inc.asp file and enable the built in logging system, this will then log information to a log file about new registrations including IP's, times, etc.
  • Use the permission system to enable 'Post Approval' for the new registrations group, so that an admin or moderator have to first check the post before it is displayed live in the forum
There is allot you can do with the present version of Web Wiz Forums to prevent spammers, it just depends how far you want to go as you may end up putting off potential users.


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Posted By: WebWiz-Bruce
Date Posted: 27 November 2008 at 8:54am
By the way I manage a number of fairly large forums which have over 5,000 posts per week. I have not seen an increase in spam posts recently and these forums with just email activation enabled get around 5 spam posts per week, which is not bad out of 5,000 posts. Other members usually quickly use the report post option to report spam posts to admins and moderators.

If e-mail spam bots have been shut down down last week then this has not made an impact on the amount of spam emails there are, our mail servers which handle over 50,000 emails per day for over 2,500 email accounts actually show an increase of spam emails being received since this time last month, and no reduction at all over the last week.

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