Current configuration stops announcement comments - so I have made this thread for feedback to the announcement here: http://www.alien-ufos.com/forum/announcement.php?f=8

All input is welcome.

Cheers,
MrRonX

The only thing i can think of is another Mod or two get the Mod's together to see what they think....

Because i can't see any other way round the human spammer's apart from deletion and banning as soon as it's posted, and even though the Mod's hear do an excellent job they can't be hear 24/7.....

Apart from that i don't know....:shrug:

That's pretty well what we do... delete and ban when it's posted but the same spammer rarely ever comes back to try again and merely reregisters a new name and email address... But, we already know before if it's a spammer and often before they get a chance to activate their account they are banned... The forum members virtually see very little compared to what we ban before they get a chance to post...

Having some admin rights, I did try banning some email address but the spammers almost always use different email addresses and it became futile because it's rare two spammers will say use @blabla.com.se (whatever)..

This is huge problem just not in this forum but in other forums too once a forum gets on a spam listing, so I guess it helps to watch and see what others do about this in future...

The only alternative I can see is that no new member can do their first post unless approved by admin or a mod first... However I'm not sure if we have reached such a stage yet... mostly we are pretty quick to see spam and even though we get bad post reports about spam, in most cases we have spotted the spam before we see the bad post reports... but not always...

Dingo
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I know how much you do Dingo.....as you say the spam on the net on forums in particular is getting stupid...

I would start by figuring out how to ban proxies.

For those who don't know, a proxy server is something that changes your IP address. Like for example, if your IP address is 67.XXX.XXX.XX, and you change some settings on your browser, your connection will be rerouted through another server somewhere else (anywhere in the world to be exact) and your IP will be seen as 214.XXX.XXX.XX. I think there's a way to find your real IP even through that, but I don't know it.

As an experienced "spammer," I can tell you that a good chunk of people planning to raid a forum will use proxies so you can't report them to their ISPs, and their mommies and daddies won't get fined.

But yeah, look up how to ban proxies first and foremost. It'll put off a nice amount of spammers.

LOL... It's not the I'm accountable to my mummy and daddy 'spammers' which we are talking about here... and anyway, I think you mean trolling more than spamming with what you are describing here...

These are 'professional' companies who pay people all over the world to go and spam over the internet to try to sell their products etc... this is business... money... money... money... and you find they dont need to hide behind any proxies in a way that kids need to when trolling under their parent accounts... and they change their IP's as often as they change their email addresses and undies and banning IPs which has also been tried but we soon gave up coz it was just as futile as banning email address endings...

Doesn't put a dent in these spammers as it's the general public who want to hide their IP's behind proxies for annonymous surfing and for playing trolling games on forums..... These spammers don't have those type of cares and anyway most come from places like Russia, some of the Asian countries etc where in some places reporting to an ISP about abuse isn't going to have any effect at all...

Dingo
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Hi Ron

Sure I know how to stop spam.

What you do is once a month-or longer you make everyone re-apply as a member. Not redo the entire apply thing. Just confirm with a simple code...

You have to make a section where all members names will be, you then have to have one of those spam boxes where a member has to put in a code,(eg:VB24GF) once they have they are logged in securely twice and then anyone who takes the trouble to re-apply that way will not be spammers.

Spammers dont like to many pages to access before they can post and just give up.

So we log in normally as we do now, user name and password, but then we are re-directed to not the main page but a seperate section where we have to put in the code, this is only to post not to view and wont stop those who dont log in.

I Know this works...Depends on how much of an inconvieneance people think it is..

Also why is the quick reply section not accessible??Its closed. I can see it but I cant access the quick reply. Says something aboiut clicking in the previous post or somethiong??

Here is the link showing the small codes etc..Maybe you could just design one using the user name and password, but once your logged in just have a verification code when you post so spam bots cant access it.

This is a new guestbook im using, but im sure you could do that in here as well

http://users3.smartgb.com/g/g.php?a=s&i=g35-11304-38