Spam issues

[Tree]

Just thought I'd post a note to everyone in here from experience I had when I was a moderator on the www.ffoc.co.uk boards regarding spam.

Just before we installed an updated forum we were getting tonnes of new users registering just to spam the boards. Not only was it a pain finding all the posts by the spammers (we'd have hundreds every night) but also much of the content of the spam would be to illicit websites. As we maintained we were a family forum, just like AOG this spam wasn't good news.

As a result we asked all users to not reply or if possible not even view the threads created by the spammers. Obviously this isn't practical if the spammer had posted on an existing thread.

As a result, we saw a dramatic decrease in the amount of spam being posted. Obviously the spammers took it on board the stuff being posted wasn't being read and they moved on. We also had a captcha set up so automated users couldn't register, but that didn't stop the Eastern European spammers.

It's just a heads up and from my experience did work - you can imagine that a board of over 12,000 users with 16 moderators didn't make it easy to implement but we got there in the end.


Cheers

Lee