How To Crack Down On Spam

Hello everyone,

I'm going to share a few tips on how you can crack down on Spam on your forums:

1. Turn on Email Activation. No activation leaves your board open to anyone.
2. Create a Newly Registered Users Group and DENY certain permissions to them until they reach a certain amount of posts. 5-10 posts are usually recommended.
3. Don't rely on the default Captcha system, try and search for something else to use instead. ReCaptcha is usually a good choice, but sadly some bots are starting to crack it
4. Add additional profile fields on registration that are required. Most Spam bots will choose the first or last option available or not actually change the selection at all.
5. Look at alternative Anti-Spam mods to use for better protection.
6. Disallow PM, Email & Instant Messaging communications to newly registered members so the Spam can't be secretly spread to your members.
7. Disallow links to newly registered members.
8. Disallow signatures to newly registered members.
9. Disallow images and/or flash to newly registered members.
10. Disallow attachments to newly registered members.

The above may sound harsh, but they have been proven to reduce Spam posted on forums as any legitimate members will happily make the required posts without a problem to activate the rest of the forums features

If your extemely protective you might consider these options:

1. Enable Admin Activation.
2. Enable Post Moderation Queue.
3. Disable Profile Access.

The above options can occasionally be forum killers so they should only be used in extreme cases and not used as a permanent solution to keep the Spammers at bay.

Source: Ashley.S. of http://www.plutohosting.net/community/threads/1417/