Hi all,

Annoying as it is, most of you are probably aware that spam is a big part of the Internet experience. You're bound to see it in many ways such as through email, on a website, through a fax, or even on your cell phone.

Our forums are no different. In the past few years, I have noticed an increase in the number of automated "robots" (or software scripts) visiting our club. An automated script is a computer program that can self-register and post messages. The process is completely automated and usually hits thousands of forum sites (like ours) in a single day.

You may have seen a few of these messages in our forums. Although it is annoying, this is something that we usually cannot prevent. Once the message is posted on the system, however, I can track the user and ban him indefinitely. If it is a repeated attempt (by signing up with multiple accounts), I can track the users in other ways.

The best way to handle spam messages is to report the thread to an administrator. Don't reply to the thread. If you do this, an email is dispatched to the user and they might come back for more. You can report any thread by clicking on the appropriate link in the thread menus.

If you have any questions, don't hesitate to reply to this thread. Thanks!

Moderator Mike

Mike, on other website I've registered at (like gmail), you have to decipher the squiggly letters & numbers in a box before you can complete your registration. The sites that have this function claim it is intended to block the automated computers spammers since they cannot "read" the randomly generated combination. Perhaps it is time for the site to add this feature, if it hasn't got it already (I don't remember).

Hey Mike,

In the vb site we run at work, we have it so all users must be moderated first. Although its a PITA to have to register and wait for an email from an admin saying youre registered before you can visit the forums, is this something that might prevent bots from self registering? We dont have that problem on an intranet but it allows only registered users to participate.

The best defense against bots is to stop them registering in the first place. Bots are tailored to recognize specific software apps like vbulletin and phpbb, and supply pre-made post information to automatically register.

I've had the best success by modifying the registration page, and removing fields like hompage, msn name, stuff like that (which a user can fill out later anway), then rejecting any posts that contain these fields. You just need to pick a field that the bots always send, like homepage.