Forum Spam Registrations

[waloshin]

On my SMF forum I receive dozens of spam registrations everyday. Usually from, the Ukraine, Israel, .ru, .zebra.is...

I currently have over 300 members wanting to join, but 99.9% are all spam.
How do you combat this? I have admin email approval , but it is annoying trying to weed through the good ones all the time.

What do you do?

All I have are these three options:


* Immediate Registration

New members can login and post immediately after registering on your forum.

* Member Activation

When this option is enabled any members registering to the forum will have a activation link emailed to them which they must click before they can become full members

* Member Approval

This option will make it so all new members registering to your forum will need to be approved by the admin before they become members.

 

[Osarkon]

Doesn't your registration have one of those fields where you have to type in what's displayed on the image?


Would the Member Activation work? I was under the impression spam accounts were automated, so if that was the case they wouldn't click on an activation link?

 

[waloshin]

Doesn't your registration have one of those fields where you have to type in what's displayed on the image?


Would the Member Activation work? I was under the impression spam accounts were automated, so if that was the case they wouldn't click on an activation link?

I do , but these are real people not bots.

 

[dmmcintyre3]

I do , but these are real people not bots.

How do you know they are spam?

 

[7seven7]

How does MacRumors deal with spam? Perhaps a "god" could inform you.

 

[dmmcintyre3]

How does MacRumors deal with spam? Perhaps a "god" could inform you.

I have reported 3-4 spammers and they all have been banned if their first and only post is a spam post or all of their posts (not their sig) contains spam. They are banned within 30 min.

 

[dmr727]

If you really want to keep the spammers out without requiring a team of mods being on the lookout, you almost have to approve each member individually. On a small board where you might have just a couple of valid registrations per week - this usually isn't a big deal. I just tell the registrants to send a quick e-mail to my account and I get it added ASAP. That makes it easy to find the valid registrants among all the SPAM.

If you're running phpbb, go get toolkit.php. It'll allow you to quickly list all your inactive members awaiting activation, and you can activate the ones you want and quickly mass delete all the rest.