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I have been using Cleantalk (cleantalk.org/) on several Kunena forums and have almost ZERO spam issues. I get the occasional prospective member who emails me requesting assistance as they get caught in the filter, and those I just go to the Cleantalk site and whitelist their email.

The only other thing I have added is ReCaptcha which is effective for a new members first three posts. This combo seems to be totally effective. The cost is incredibly cheap for the effectiveness.

DISCLAIMER: I am not an employee of Cleantalk, and I do not receive any kickbacks, etc. for this post!

You can block at your web host, if you are using the likes of cPanel, either specified IP addresses or even domains. I did it this way. There are also ways within Joomla I believe, and certainly some extensions to block. I also use the services like Akismet and other website anti spam that checks against a database before it allows registration or content. Not 100% but does have an affect. The extension has to have the ability to do that, and from memory Kunena does. You register on the relevant site and once approved your site is given it's own key to use. Like most of these you use a number of tools with each one reducing the level of spam. You will never get rid of all but you can reduce to a manageable level.

I also use the Siteground cross site scripting prevention extension that has helped to prevent a lot of issues and hacks. And of course as you mentioned; captcha. I still notice sites still using earlier versions of captcha that proved less effective as spammers and bots got more savvy.

One site is a small national voluntary club with paid membership we found that the extension handling the joining sent out a notification before checking that the money had been paid and the membership secretary informed. This allowed in that brief period for the spammer to achieve their task. Though this was corrected in a later version of the extension it is something you need to watch out for.

I experienced this same problem immediately after the update to 5.1. As a temporary solution, I went back to version 5.0.14. This downgrade resolved the anonymous posting but introduced a new problem where users cannot update their profiles. If they try to make a change, they see the message 'Unknown column 'aim' in 'field list'.

There is a separate thread explaining that the aim field has been removed from v5.1. An unsupported solution is to manually add the field to the Kunena users table but this is heavily caveated. I have 50,000 posts in my forum so do not want to run that risk.

Is there a schedule to release 5.1.1 please?

With thanks
David

Does anyone have any recommended strategies/extensions? I am happy with the system I use but wanted to ask in case anyone has a better or easier strategy?

stopforumspam - enabled
Captcha - enabled for first post (registered users)
Ratmil R-antispam (this catches a lot but has the occasional hiccup)

Nearly all my spam comes from "people" registering with 02.pl email addresses - does anyone know how to block email types?

Thanks all who helped!

Hello,

I have read your articles on the 500 error and I am still hoping you can help. I was receiving a large amount of spam on my forum, so I decided to use the stop forum spam link provided and obtained an API.

I added an API to Kunena> Configuration>Security> API key > The service API key. Get one at stopforumspam. I went to this site created the account, the API and added it to the place I described above. Then I went to the front page and received the 500 error page I also described. Then I removed the the API from the same place and it still isn't working.

ALL other pages work as they should, the only page not working is the Kunena forum page where I added the API from the stopforumspam.

www.michigan-fastpitch.com/michigan-travel-teams - works
www.michigan-fastpitch.com/ - works
www.michigan-fastpitch.com/what-is-mifp - works
www.michigan-fastpitch.com/support-mifp - works
www.michigan-fastpitch.com/home - does not work

I'm not blaming anyone, however all worked well until I added the API, then the the 500 error showed up. Any help or suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

I have also tried the forum on stopforumspam.com, to no avail! Please help?

810 wrote: I made again an extra check, please try now.
If this doesn't work, then i don't know. Then its a joomla user. Not a bot with access to post.

Tried again, same problem. I had disabled all users except the administrators, and I know neither of us us doing it. Still got another anonymous spam post.

Our forum is set so that Guests can only read, never write. Yet in the past few days, following updates to latest J 3.8.7 and K 5.1.0 this is happening. While the posts, which are spam, are held for moderation, this Guest, shown as ANONYMOUS [in caps] but that's all we can see. The spam "apparel" type posts seem auto-generated. I've rechecked the forum settings and they are as I expected. If I come into the forum myself as a guest and try to post I just get a message to say to do that I need to be registered. Registrations on our forum are by specific invitation and are manually processed af the back end by myself.

Can anyone suggest what is going on, or how I can stop it? Is it a possible server thing?

Hi there,

I have locked out the compromising IP Address range by Admin tools. Since then the problem is gone.
Anyway, this is not a very elegant and durable solution.

I will try your update and lift the Admin tools blocking in the next days, when I have some time.

Best regards

Michael

I made again an extra check, please try now.
If this doesn't work, then i don't know. Then its a joomla user. Not a bot with access to post.

810 wrote: there is a extra security option, please change Direct Component Access to "No", but check if everything is working. It can preventing logins ect.

I made this change and brought my forum back online. Within 4 hours, I had yet another anonymous post trying to sell dodgy jewelry.
Guest posting is off, anonymous posting is off, direct component access is off.

(Have now taken forum offline again until we can fix this.)

Like the above poster, the spam posts are all replies to threads.

Ok, i have added some extra checks, please try the nightly build and please give any feedback after some days, if its working correctly now.

Which Kunena template are you using, and which reply option do you have set.

Maybe then i can reproduce the issue.

there is a extra security option, please change Direct Component Access to "No", but check if everything is working. It can preventing logins ect.

Hi 810

In my case it’s just Replies

Best regards

Michael

810 wrote: is the spam a new topic or new reply?

in my case they were spam posted into replies to existing threads