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#1 2012-06-04 17:56:59
Preventing SPAM on your forum
In this day and age, a lot of people want to increase their rank on search engines as quickly as possible, because a rank on search engines can be the difference between success and failure. How some people have chosen to do this is by deploying spambots on forums that post links to their site, which increases their rank. This is all at the expense of the forum owner.
Often, I see posts like this on forums. A bot creates a disposable account, posts links to their site, and leaves. The links then increase their rank on Google. This is a waste of space in the forum database, and annoying to all of the users who have to see it. It gets worse when the spam contains inappropriate images (which I have seen happen before, but let's not go there).
However, there is a way to prevent this. Most spambots are easily detectable and can be blocked with the simple scripts listed below.
The basic idea
There are two methods that I use that prevent spam on my forums. I will provide code for both in FluxBB.
1. Add a hidden password field, and if anything is put in it, it is spam. Most spambots will put text in any password field on the sign-up form, in order to make sure they specify a password.
2. Check HTTP headers
Code for FluxBB (by me)
Last edited by jvvg (2012-06-07 22:21:44)
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#8 2012-06-05 08:55:09
- scimonster
- Community Moderator
- Registered: 2010-06-13
- Posts: 1000+
Re: Preventing SPAM on your forum
That's a nice tricky way of catching with the hidden password field.
The stopforumspam.com database isn't perfect, as spammers can use usernames they found elsewhere of nice guys... that happened to someone on Coders' Shed. It's probably better to just alert the admins when someone from the database signs up, instead of completely blocking them, to keep an eye on them.
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#9 2012-06-05 09:05:08
Re: Preventing SPAM on your forum
scimonster wrote:
That's a nice tricky way of catching with the hidden password field.
The stopforumspam.com database isn't perfect, as spammers can use usernames they found elsewhere of nice guys... that happened to someone on Coders' Shed. It's probably better to just alert the admins when someone from the database signs up, instead of completely blocking them, to keep an eye on them.
I know that the stopforumspam.com database isn't that reliable with usernames, so I only check IP addresses and emails.
The alerting thing doesn't work on one of the forums I run, as it gets about 20-30 spammers an hour.
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#10 2012-06-05 20:22:49
- stevetheipad
- Scratcher
- Registered: 2011-08-06
- Posts: 1000+
Re: Preventing SPAM on your forum
Good idea!
My only concern is that it doesn't look professional. I wish there were a more professional approach at this.
But overall, nice idea, jacob!
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#11 2012-06-06 10:08:06
- stevetheipad
- Scratcher
- Registered: 2011-08-06
- Posts: 1000+
Re: Preventing SPAM on your forum
Also, how about a screenshot of what'd it look like?
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#13 2012-06-06 11:21:11
Re: Preventing SPAM on your forum
I have updated it, so it no longer uses stopforumspam.com.
It instead just uses the hidden password field and HTTP headers.
Does anyone have any suggestions or other ideas?
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#14 2012-06-07 22:22:16
Re: Preventing SPAM on your forum
The code is now available in a FluxBB mod (by me), located at https://fluxbb.org/resources/mods/anti- … ses/0.1.1/
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