I have set up a few forums (OK, it is fora, but I’m going to say forums here because fora sort of sounds like “flora and fauna”).
One of them, http://www.facebookgamesforum.com , has been hit rather hard with spam. Every day I am having to delete a dozen or more posts to sites that promise to show me bits of women that I would rather not see.
So I have been doing some research into what I can do about it.
The software I use for forums is called SMF (Simple Machines Forum). I will shortly have a video eCourse available to teach people how to set up a forum using this software (but that’s for a later post!).
SMF has a large number of modifications available, called packages. I was trawling through the spam-related ones this morning, but many of them seem to be incompatible with the latest release of SMF.
Till I found Stop Forum Spam. This is a wonderful package that checks the IP address, userid and email address of anyone who registers, against a list of known spammers.
And what’s more, that list of know spammers is available for public query at http://www.stopforumspam.com .
So now I am going through the list of everyone who has registered already, and getting rid of the ones who are on that spammers list. I am shocked. About 95% of the “people” who have registered for that forum are on the spammers list.
It seems the spammers are registering daily for several days, using lots of different ids and email addresses, but often the same IP address. I am assuming they will unleash a spam flood at some time in the future.
Since the Stop Forum Spam package only stops those on the list from registering, but doesn’t stop them from posting, I need to check all those who have already registered.
Oh well. Back to the grindstone…
Christine
