Forum bots

SeanValentine · Posted: 10/21/2009, 12:42 pm Post subject: Forum bots

I'm not sure if this is the correct place to go about this but hopefully you guys will be able to provide some assistence. My forums are currently not active, and I have literally spent 9 months finding the absolute perfect web designer for the task. While the designer is hard at work, I have been searching for vbulletin hacks that will prevent bots from spamming my forums. Unfortunately, I have not found anything that satisfies me.

Right now, my options are to install software that requires 1st time posts to be moderated, or to require any posts that contain links to be moderated. However, my community is being designed for large numbers and tiny inconvienences like having to wait for your post to be approved just because it contains a link, or waiting for a moderator to approve you before being allowed to participate on the forums cannot be tolerated.

This is not the first time I have had to deal with this issue, but in the past, the problem has fixed itself when community members simply outnumbered the bots and the bot posts were just lost in the sea of incomming topics. Eventually, the bots stopped comming all together.

That is not the case however for my new community. Bots have been populating my forums (a forum that I paid for) since I bought a vbulletin license over 9 months ago. If I try to delete them, it seems like they come back with twice the numbers and twice the amount of spam.

If you would like to get a first hand look at the destruction that they have caused, check out http://www.gamedesignstudents.com/forums/

If you have any suggestions, I could sure use the help! Thanks!

(a friend of mine even suggested I start charging for subscriptions for all the porn that is spammed on the forums - a joke of course)
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Bob Hubbard · Posted: 10/24/2009, 9:37 am Post subject:

Use a strong captcha on registration.
Also, goto admin activation of new members.
Add registration fields that are hard for bots to fake.
- Name is easy. Ask for a Full Name.
- Location - Ask for specifics (City, state/ city/province city/country)
- Add 1 or 2 site/industry specific questions
--- Preferred Platform (web/PC/Mac/Linux/Wii/PS2/etc)
--- Genre (FPS/RPG/RTS/Puzzle/etc)

Anyone who doesn't fill out an accurate profile is not activated.
You can delete them, stick them in a holding pen, ban em, etc.
Anyone claiming their name is asdfg is a bot, or an idiot. Ban.
Anyone whose name matches their email address (widgit07 for example) is a bot. Ban.
Rest, you'll learn the autoreg patterns and improve your filtering.

I dropped -ALL- my ip and email block lists, went to a similar system, and cut my posted spam down by 100%.

Also, clean out your spam. It's hurting you by having it public. It makes your site look abandoned and invites more bots to the party.
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SeanValentine · Posted: 10/25/2009, 5:28 pm Post subject:

I absolutely agree. Unfortunately, I have cleared out the bots several times but they continue to come back.

Thanks for the advice, just before I clicked back on this thread to check the response, I remembered that I could add questions to the registration field. Thanks for the reminder!

One thing about having them fill out a full name though is, since there will be several professional game designers visiting the site, I do not believe they want any record of their real names in any data files anywhere. They often register using a fake or secondary email address too.

However, the platform and genre questions would be a very clever idea. Thanks for all the suggestions and ideas!
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Bob Hubbard · Posted: 10/27/2009, 12:28 am Post subject:

If it looks like a legit name, I'd just go with it.
John Smith means even though they lied, they at least complied
maddog2020 means it's probably a bot, especially if name and email match something that cryptic.
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