Keeping Forums free of Spam 

More important than you think

Spam-bots and why they are not only a nuisance but also a real threat to a website. 

You know spammers have taken spamming forums to an art form. They have bots that do nothing but crawl the web looking for forums to post to. Sometimes they do not even post but merely leave their calling card as a link to their site in the members list. This is done just to get more incoming links to boost their page rank but if it is to a sex site it could place your google ads or any ppc or affiliate ads in jeopardy. I will try to explain some of the steps you can take to fight back.

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The "WHY" of keeping Forums free of Spam 

I have instituted a .php program whereby any new registrar to any of my forums must find and write down the  registration authorization code then enter it on the registration page. Take it a step further and place it in a pic in .gif format which I have done so the bots can't read it. To take it a step further you could have the person email you for the code, this will most likely even deter human spammers.  This means they will not have instant access to post in any forum but it will cut down on the spam-bots and spammers that have been plaguing your forums. You can get several antispam mods from sourceforge.net.

Now as to why I felt this needed to be done.

Spam-bots do not always post to a forum when they register. In fact only about 10% or less do. The important thing for them is to register. They do this in order to have their web address in the Members list. When a search engine crawls your pages it finds these URL’s and sees them as links from your site to theirs. This will increase their page rank standings in the search engines and they are hoping this will lead to them one-upping their competition. They may also get the occasional click through by someone who is looking in the Members list, giving them a possible customer. The 10% or less that actually post in the forums know their post is coming down. They just hope a few users see it before it does. The Members list is what they wanted. Many will post something simple like “Happy New Year” or “Hello Everyone” Most forum owners see nothing wrong with this post though they may wonder why go through the trouble to register just to post that. It was to get in the Members list and possibly stay there a while if not forever.

Meanwhile the search engines see your site, as having links to sex sites, which if you are running ads by Google and other crawler based ads, will place your ad account in jeopardy. It is a violation of the TOS (terms of service) for most ad campaigns to be affiliated with any sex sites or to have any sexual content on your site. The forums are a part of your site and so are treated as if you are promoting sexual content. This is why you MUST remove all banned content that is placed in your forums. It is not just a matter of your not wanting this smut on your site, but you could lose your advertising as a result as well.

But what of those links in the Members list? Well in order to delete these you have to get into your database on the web host and find each bad URL and delete it. This is not so easily done. First finding the Member List within the database can be a hassle and then you have to discriminate between those good URL’s and those that are not. You delete the wrong one and a user might just get a case of the ass and never come back.

So as a temporary measure you can place another .php program that hides inactive users. You can set it for however many days you want but essentially if a user is inactive for a certain period of time their ‘profile’ is hidden. This makes the sex site unseen to a person, eliminating some of the incentive for a person to manually post, but a search crawler will still see the link, and so bots do not care if the link in unseen or not.

If you have blocked automated registration by the bots then the only URLs that will show in the Members list are those of people who placed the registration manually. Now there are those who do this for sex sites and other ad sites. In fact there are some who are paid to do this. Their job is to seek out forums and register and possibly even post sexual or other ad related content on your site. Fortunately they are few, and it is fairly simple to delete the post and ban the User.

The problem is that they have unlimited resources in so far as emails, user name and IP addresses. I, myself, with my hosting plan can have up to 100,000 emails and usernames are limited only by your imagination. However I am limited to the 5 IP’s for my 5 primary websites, though I can have up to 9,999 sub-domains for each of the 5 main domains. That's nearly 50,000 sub-domains to post under but the IP address is shared and if the post is deleted by the IP address with a "range" of IP's being blocked, then all my sub-domains under that primary IP is blocked.

 The scumbags that would spam your account however have their own servers and what little it costs them for an IP address is well worth the return they get. So you will never be able to ban all. What you can hope for is that after they see that you are on top of things and are deleting their posts as fast as they place them and that because , their URL in the members list is hidden, They will go away. There are always others who will replace those who get discouraged but you are down to deleting maybe one or 2 posts a day a week, a month, a year or less depending on how popular your forum is, and once a week or so you dig into your data file and delete the URL’s of these scum so that search does not find them in the member list either.

In your Admin ban control you can use wildcards to delete entire ranges of web addresses and emails. For instance if you find that much of your unwanted posts are coming from emails that end in “.ru” or “.info” you can block all posts from this simply by using wildcards and doing this. @*.ru* or @*.info *. Now of course any person who happens to have this same last email will be blocked as well. But if you find that 95% of the registrants you get from these email accounts are giving you problems then maybe having the other 5% isn’t worth the trouble. To block an IP is much the same. Say you have gotten hit with several IP’s that are close like 87.99.79.91, 87.99.79.92, 87.99.79.106 well you see the pattern and so you block these by doing this 87.99.79.* or to be even safer you might want to block even more 87.99.*.* or if you have very little users with an 87 URL block them all 87.*.*.*. Again some innocents may get caught up in the block but if it keeps your headaches down to a minimum it will be worth it. You can always put something that says that if they email you and give you their IP you can unblock just their IP. If it is a static IP and not shared. Personally I would just let it go, as one user is not worth the hassle. Sorry if that hurts anyone’s feelings but it is true.

Now some think that you can use a robots.txt file and tell the search engines not to index the forum. That this will make the forum impossible for any to find except those who get there from your website. In other words say my site is about Cerebral Palsy and I have 30 pages devoted to the subject and a forum for those who want to use it. If I place the forum up without a robots.txt file telling search to look elsewhere it will index the forum and then any who search for phpbb or forum or BBS or any such thing will eventually find your forum and start hitting it with spam. But if that forum is not indexed they can’t find it unless they happen to go to your website and find the link to the forum.  WRONG!! this may stop the page from being indexed by good bots but not the spambot. Spam Bots are programmed to ignore the robot text and look in that page for a forum. A simple robots text only keeps legitimate robots out not the spammers.

So, another bogus trick I've heard of:  Instead of using a common name you change the folder name in your control panel to like ‘chucky’ and you place a link on your site that says “looking for help click here” and link it to your “chucky” folder which is really your phpbb forum. Now you will not make any money off that forum as it will not be indexed by good bots and manual spammers can't find it,  but you still have not eliminated  the threat that your forum will be spammed. The bots can find it and will.

Personally I need that ad revenue so I cannot do this and even if I did it wouldn't work. You do not need your site associated with sex sites nor do you need the extra hassle of deleting posts daily and digging in your data file to delete URL’s. No opt for the simple solution if you can. Hopefully someday some computer wiz will figure out how to block any posts and URL’s from spam sites and people or rather scumbags who would prey on the ignorant and do so without regard to how they are actually hurting them by lowering their page rank and jeopardizing their ad revenue.

I would gladly pay for such a program. But until one comes along I have done all that I can to keep these scum off my forums. I have made it impossible for spam-bots because of my requirement that a person use a code to register. I have gone even one better by placing the code in a .gif so it can only be read by a person and not any bot. If you wanted to go even further you could have the user send you an email asking for the authentication code. This may lose you some who want instant gratification but those who remain will have a much better experience not having to deal with spam-bots.

You can get this nifty little program for free at www.sourceforge.net  . Just search for antispam programs; there are plenty to choose from. You will have to modify your php programming language in your phpbb forum file but there are step by step instructions for doing so. Once you have disabled the bot from placing spam onto your forums you only have to contend with the human element. This is still somewhat frustrating but it is a simple matter to ban them from the control panel and weekly you just open your control panel data file on your host server and delete them from the members list. Eventually they give up and "knock wood" I haven't had a spam attack in several months since doing this.

Having a forum is a good thing for you and your users but protecting that forum can be a daunting task. If you want more info on any of these programs that will protect your forums check the boards at phpbb or sourceforge.net

Good day 

Robert

Robert Taormina

Webmaster

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