Post by Tommy on Jul 26, 2022 7:46:23 GMT -8
Hi grahamdevizes, spam can be a big problem on my forum as well if we don't manage it, and we get between 2-5 new (mostly legitimate) member signups per day. Our team is one admin and two global moderators who I trust with my life. Together redundantly we employ a strategy of combating spam and it is our number one priority on the forum. As a side note, we are blessed that one of our GM's is on the east coast and I'm on the west coast so we get a wide time zone coverage. Our other GM was an investigator as his career and he digs up stuff that we miss.
I'm a little pressed for time by having to get to work this morning but I will bullet point what we do every day with every new account and maybe you'll find a nugget here that helps improve your situation.
I hope this has been somewhat helpful to you and anyone else. It sounds like a lot of work but it becomes a routine and doing it a few times a day it's not a big deal. If one of us is busy that day we know that it's still being done.
I will add that as an additional layer of security I do a lot of history checking. I try to check the birthday list every day, and the member list as often as possible, and I still find spam accounts that slipped through before I took over in 2016.
Tommy
I'm a little pressed for time by having to get to work this morning but I will bullet point what we do every day with every new account and maybe you'll find a nugget here that helps improve your situation.
- Settings - guests can see, but not create threads or reply to posts, in all public areas of the forum
- All staff checks every new account as close to as they happen as possible
- We have a staff-only board and we talk about anything suspicious (such as the use of VPN)
- We use the mod IP Lookup for convenience and every new account is checked
- On What's My IP we check location and see if a VPN is being used to mask the IP
- We have created a list of countries that automatically get banned - Vietnam is the top offender
- On Stop Forum Spam we search all new usernames and email addys for spam reports
- As a side note, I have a SFS forum account and I add any positive findings to their database
- If posts have been made it gets a bit easier - we carefully check the content
- We look for (obvious) spam and especially embedded links
- We look for innocent looking posts where the content is too non-specific to our forum subject
- If a post feels 'wrong' we check to see if it was copied and pasted from a legit forum post
- Non-specific content, and pasted content are almost always link-planters - they come back later and edit the post
- If anything obvious has been found we ban the username AND we ban the global ID
- If everything is negative, we internet search the username and email address
- If ANY red flags exist we err on the side of banning - but often I will send an email explaining why it was flagged
I hope this has been somewhat helpful to you and anyone else. It sounds like a lot of work but it becomes a routine and doing it a few times a day it's not a big deal. If one of us is busy that day we know that it's still being done.
I will add that as an additional layer of security I do a lot of history checking. I try to check the birthday list every day, and the member list as often as possible, and I still find spam accounts that slipped through before I took over in 2016.
Tommy