Sticky How to protect my forum from spam

Spambots and open forums is a pain.

I've learned through my work on a large forum, that most spam can be avoided with 3 simple mechanisms:

1. Keep an empty input field on the form and check if it is empty on submit (hidden by css)
2. Use spamhaus.org to lookup ips posting
3. Keep writing-page protected by js. Eg. Use the "Reply"-button to submit a js form for the write-page (see below)

Our system turns #2 off, if a user logs in.
#3 is a bit hard to implement, but #1 and #2 keeps large amounts of spam away...




Best regards

Just forgot...

The existing captcha and floodprotection is good (two very different things!), but they both needs a config option to turn each of them off for eg. registrered users vs public users.

Or even better ... They should be configurable pr. forum (a lot of the configs really should be that way )

i working on a "system" ANTI SPAM it will be like spamhaus stopforumspam
may be later will be add at Kunena

Hi!

I have a Kunena 1.5.5 installation running on a Joomla 1.5.14 Website.

In the last few days, i am dealing with lots of spam posts to one of the forums. With that, i could live - but what makes me curious is that the posts are in a forum, that is not existing.

In 'jos_fb_messages' i find messages with 'catid = 9', but in 'jos_fb_categories' there is no 'id = 9'.

Now i have createt a special "Spam" Forum and changed the category id manually to 9 so i can view the posted messages. This special forum can only be accessed by Admins (front- and backend), but spam-posts are still coming in.

Can anyone help me with this issue?

Thanks in advance!
Jens

Spambots can most certainly target nonexistent categories.
Url's to them, has no requirement of a link (as we humans almost do )

I assume you have looked in the logfiles to see identify the target of the spambots?
Have you looked at the IP's to see if the spam originates from the same place(s)?
Can you identify some referrer from the logfiles?
What is the url of you forum (and the targetted categorie(s))?

There is some simple spamprotection within Kunena such as captcha, valid email requirement and a few others.

If that isn't enough, you can get some simple tips from a recent thread here:
www.kunena.com/forum/119-feature-request...imple-spamprotection
That might be manual work in the templates, but in the long run it's better than the spam.

Just beware, the bots will probably target your forum anyway, so you wont get rid of the bandwidth (or serverload) they consume.
That way you'll have to use some more advanced ipblocking on the server.

Hi!

Thanks for your reply.

I am aware of the fact, that an open-to-everybody forum attracts spam bots. But in this case, the forum into which the spam posts are posted is a restricted one (only visible and accessable to admin-rank or higher). And that is even only possible, as i have created the forum with catid = 9 after the spam posts were made. Before that, the forum didn't even exist.

How can a spam bot post into such a forum without even being logged into joomla?

The URL of the forum is
aufdenklippen.de/index.php?option=com_ku...func=showcat&catid=9