Merged How to protect my forum from spam

Hi -

is there a plugin/addon or setting in kunena that can stop users from posting spam link try a period of time.

for instance... only allow users to be able to post hyperlinks if they X days old or they have more than X posts???

You can moderate new users, and make them have to use Captcha for a certain number of posts, it is in the Kunena backend.

Hi,
Yesterday I had a situation on my forum, where someone had been able to post a new Topic (which was clearly spam/advertising rubbish), but when I look in the Joomla and Kunena user manager features, they had not registered.

I have allow guests to post set to NO, so I am worried about how they have got in.

I have got the free SPAMFIGHTER extension working with the Forum.

Would anyone be able to suggest how they managed to updata my forum without being logged in and whether there is anything I could do or extension to use, to mitigate this.

I deleted the post, but I can't see any way to stop it happening again

I would appreciate advice and assistance

Rob.

Could someone please expalin how someone/something being able to post to my forum category without a login, despite the forum configuration being defined as Registered users only can post is spam?

Maybe I am not getting the meaning of spam, but I would have expected the user to have been registered and in this instance they aren't - this seems to be more like hacking into the forum.

Ive read the "31 pages" of this merged topic and noone can agree on a good simple method or extension.... so can anyone state a good way to prevent non registered "users" from creating posts.. please

Thanks

Rob

Our system allows open posts (posts by non-registered or non-logged in users). Something we need to do although it's not ideal.

I used "Forum Protection" by "jootools" ( www.stefysoft.com ) for a long time and it seemed to work well. You can specify the actual words used to filter spam.

Then, a couple of weeks ago, our spam count dramatically increased and we don't know why. I switched to jantispam (i.e. spam fighter) and it seems to do a better job. It has (temporarily) solved the problem.

Also, while I haven't tested it yet jantispam supposedly works with K. 2.0.1 while Forum Protection doesn't (yet).

Robbie8 wrote: Could someone please explain how someone/something being able to post to my forum category without a login, despite the forum configuration being defined as Registered users only can post is spam?

We are aware that there are a number of blackhat programs that are able to successfully register and forum spam with the aim of boosting search engine rankings. These program are able to bypass security techniques commonly used by many forums and blogs to deter automated spam, such as account registration, client detection, many forms of CAPTCHAs, and e-mail activation before posting. These program utilises socks and http proxies in an attempt to make it more difficult for administrators to block posts by source IP and feature a proxy checking tool to verify the integrity and anonymity of the proxies used.

In addition, the software can avoid the suspicions of forum administrators by first registering to make a post in the form of a question which mentions the spam product ("Where can I get...?"), before registering another account to post a spam link which mentions the product. The side effect of these innocent-looking posts is that helpful forum visitors may search on a search engine (e.g. Google) for the product and themselves post a link to help out, thus bolstering the product's Google ranking without falling afoul of forum posting policies. The software is also capable of avoiding detection by making posts in off-topic, spam and overflow sections of forums thus attempting to keep its activities in high activity low content areas of the targeted forum.

Webmasters of topical forums face an ongoing battle against these blackhat software, users of which are almost always in violation of forum terms of service , and/or have no interest in the actual forum topic. The users of the software have created an entire industry whose sole purpose is to protect internet sites against users of this kind of spam-generating software. Forum administration tasks against this spamming software are often a constant, daily effort, which include identifying new user accounts that are from users of the software, deleting posts/threads created by the software, and deleting/disabling the user accounts. As I have mentioned a dozen or more times in this topic,

sozzled wrote: "The only truly effective remedy against spam is vigilance." - sozzled, 25 May 2010

There are several helpful resources that help block forum spam, notably " www.stopforumspam.com ", " www.keypic.com " and " www.botscout.com ", both of which reference reports of forum spam by username and IP address. If a user/IP has appeared in the lists of either of those sites, it is highly likely that it is a black-hat user of. Common defensive actions by webmasters are to institute IP-based posting bans on entire class C ranges of IP addresses used by the spammers.

The spam messages in a forum typically take the form of "link spam" which will often be included in older topics and private messages (PMs) leaving the newer threads and posted messages "clear" of apparent spam. Sophisticated spammers will copy posts from other areas of the site, giving the appearance of a valid, on-topic reply. The best clue that it is a spammer is that the links in the user profile are completely unrelated to the forum topic, and the posted messages, while seemingly within the general topic of the forum, will be non-sequiturs and out-of-place within the topic thread. Alternatively, the spammers post generic "I am excited to begin posting and contributing here" messages that are content-neutral.

The damage caused to forums is classified in several areas: first, and foremost, the admin time to clean the forum. Second, the server bandwidth to accommodate the spam postings, third, the storage requirements at the forum server for the spam messages that are devoid of content, and fourth but perhaps the most important, the lowering of the information-to-noise ratio of the forum, which diminishes the value of the forum, skewing usage/active user statistics used to determine advertising rates.

Has there been any updates to the implementation of stopforumspam ??

Hello we recently started to use Kunena forums and Joomla very happy with it. Is there any kind of extension or add on we can install to stop spam bots from being able to register on our forums.

*** Topics merged ***

Hi

At the risk of reviving this evergreen topic, I would just like to re-plug the free SpamFighter plugin (pardon the pun).

extensions.joomla.org/extensions/access-...pam-protection/16331

I have nothing to do with the developer apart from being a very satisfied user, and it has single-handedly eliminated 99% of my Kunena spam problems. It takes about a week to train it, by marking any spam posts, but it then gets miraculously smarter and smarter with its Bayesian algorithm.

Now at most 1 post per week makes it past Captcha and SpamFighter (for a forum where you don't have to register to post). Before, using only Captcha, I'd have 10-20 per day.

An absolute Godsend that I can't recommend enough: it really decreases the amount of vigilance required in constantly policing threads.

I almost feel bad writing about it though, in case it becomes too popular and the spambots start trying to explicitly game SpamFighter, but hey, until that happens, hope this saves someone else a lot of headache.

Cheers!