Sticky How to protect my forum from spam

1) please tell me how do i protect my forum from spam ?

2)i also want to prevent users from adding links to my forum like http://www.test1{.}com?

G'day, kr200, and welcome to Kunena.

The problem with spam has less to do with the Kunena forum software than it does with how you administer your website. Yes, there are ways that you can minimise the amount of spam that you might get on your forum but it depends on the lengths to which you are prepared to go to control it. Although there are features built into Kunena to help you control the amount of spam, how does one adequately answer the question "How do I protect my forum from spam?" One might as well ask the question "How long is a piece of string?" One could also ask the question "How do I stop people asking the same question over and over again?" There are no simple answers to these kinds of never-ending questions.

As I have just written, the problem with spam actually has very little to do with Kunena. It is for this reason that this discussion is "off-topic" to the main purpose of www.kunena.org which is about helping people install Kunena, maintain Kunena and to answer questions that specifically relate to Kunena. The problem with spam is that no forum software is totally immune. Some products make it easier than others to allow spam to get on people's websites and some products are a little better in this regard. I will leave it to others to comment on whether Kunena is better, worse, or on a par with other products.

Just because the problem is "off-topic" to Kunena does not mean that we should not discuss the issue in a calm, objective and reasonable way and I hope that we can continue to do that to help one another.

Certainly there are ways that we can improve Kunena to make it more difficult to let spam get onto your forum; however, for every technical improvement that is made to Kunena there will be someone who will get around the restrictions and then we're back where we started. As I have written on numerous occasions

The only effective remedy against spam is vigilance.

As a general guide to some of the things that you can do, I suggest you read my post (msg #186 in this topic) which might help you to understand the problem that we are all dealing with.

Some site genres are more likely to attract spam than others. Some sites are an open invitation to spam. Even if you put a signpost on the front page of your site that warns "If you spam you'll be banned", spammers don't give a damn. They'll do what they want to do regardless of whatever policy your site has. It's up to you to deal with it when it happens. Kunena has a number of good moderation tools that help people deal with the spam menace. This topic mentions those tools, if you have the patience to read what others have written.

In conclusion, there is no "silver bullet", guaranteed solution to the spam problem and that's just something people need to accept as a fact. I hope that what I have written will give you something to think about. The solution is in your capable hands.

I have been getting spam registrations on my site even though I had the Kunena forum for registered only. I think it is the Kunena registration because all of the other ones have Captcha.

Is there a Captcha plug-in for Kunena? How do I keep out the spambots?

Kunena does not have a registration function; Kunena is not responsible for user registration. Please look at this topic which will help you.

Hello!

I am not particularly concerned about spam postings to Kunena since registration is required, but I want to drive off the spammers that mess up site visitor stats.

I just installed a Project Honeypot URL in my root directory. I have sprinkled hidden links all over my site, directing spammers to the Honeypot URL.

Kunena (1.6.4) is the major target for spammers and I would like to catch them when they try to look at it. I put commented out links in category descriptions but they nevertheless appeared to the public.

Where can one put a commented out link? Do I have to add it to a .php file and if so, which one? Can I go into the MySql DB and edit a file there? Ideally I would like to put a link on the entry page, which is where the spammers start.

Any suggestions much appreciated.

Lowtech

G'day, lowtech, and welcome to Kunena.

lowtech wrote: Kunena (1.6.4) is the major target for spammers ...

I recommend that you read How do I protect my forum from spam? Although this does not give any prescriptive technical remedy, it does put the question in perspective and, from this perpective, I don't think it's reasonable to conclude that K 1.6.4 (or any specific version of Kunena) is more or less the major target for spammers.

lowtech wrote: ... I put commented out links in category descriptions but they nevertheless appeared to the public.

Would you like to give a few more details about how you "commented out" links in category descriptions and how you see this technique as a means to deal with the spam issues that you appear to be having?

lowtech wrote: I am not particularly concerned about spam postings to Kunena since registration is required ...

Irrespective of how you've defined your user registration procedures, the fact remains that accounts will be registered and they will be used by spam merchants to plaster your site with their nonsense. This fact is confirmed by the occasional attempts made by people (or automated technology) to attack this website, too.

It's difficult for me to respond to your specific question ("Where can one put a commented out link") without understanding what link you are referring to. Maybe a picture of your problem will help.