Anti-Spamming Techniquees

[David Artman]

As we seem to have a few spammers getting through the site registration, perhaps you would benefit from reading this thread:
http://www.somniturne.com/gtp/forum/viewtopic.php?t=425

Basically, I asked for a minor tweak to the forum links, and another guy began to describe a trick for making auto-application spambots unable to join the forum. I don't know if SMF allows similar hidden variables, but it might be a start. The last post (currently) in the thread ha coding examples and such.

HTH;
David

edited by me to fix the link - RE

[Ron Edwards]

Clinton's coming up with a way to stop/reduce the spam we've been getting hit with. I don't know when it'll be ready or implemented.

Best, Ron

[Anders Larsen]

It is nice to see that you are working on some way to reduce the spam, but as it is now it is actually hard to use the First Thoughts forum, so I will propose a quick fix you maybe can use until you have something better in place.

It seems like all the spam end in the First Thoughts forum, and my guess is that the spam bots just drop their spam in first forum that is listed on the site. So my idea is that you can make a "Do Not Post Here" forum, at the top of the forum list, that can catch all the spam so it does not end in First Thoughts.

I know this is an ugly fix, but right now I would accept anything that get all the spam out of the First Thoughts forum.

 - Anders

[Clyde L. Rhoer]

Hey folks,

There is something you can do in the meantime to make the First Thoughts forum work better for you. There are two column's before the thread title. One column is used for indicating the post is a sticky. The other is used to indicate... I don't know what. Regardless there will be an icon that kind of looks like a newspaper. Every thread with the newspaper is spam, every thread without the newspaper icon isn't spam. I've gotten to where I hardly even see the titles of the threads preceded by the icon, and zip right by them to the good stuff.

Now don't go make a legitimate thread that uses the newspaper icon or you'll mess up my system.