New spam comment countermeasures - would like feedback

[Patrick]

Hi STH forum community,

Added a new anti-spam feature today that will block people adding links in their profiles, signatures or posts when they first register.

Background
I started noticing (and deleting) several users who would register and just post spam in their profiles which is the big reason for doing this.

Luckily XenForo makes these easy to spot:


But frankly, I need a solution other than deleting 10 of these manually each day.

New Requirements
You will now need to have the following to post links:

• 3 posts
• 1 post like
• 1 day registered

We are also going to do matching for harder to find urls so if you do not meet minimum requirements and try posting w w w . yahoo . com that will get picked up as well.

The Question
Does this sound too burdensome or unreasonable? I know a lot of people do register to post news or something they find, but need to take some countermeasures against these bots.

Regards,
Patrick

 

[Quasduco]

Sounds reasonable to me. Still not as tough or as human involved as some forums that do like first 10 posts need mod approval or the like...

 

[PigLover]

Reasonable. I might even make the "days registered" longer. I know its a PITA for new members, but a paid spam bozo might just wait it out for a day and post next day, but for 7 days he'd likely go somewhere else.

Is there any way to allow links to "well known, not likely to be spam" URLs with a lighter restriction? I've seen a lot of legit first-time posters who post links to ebay in the "great deals" section.

 

[Patrick]

Reasonable. I might even make the "days registered" longer. I know its a PITA for new members, but a paid spam bozo might just wait it out for a day and post next day, but for 7 days he'd likely go somewhere else.

Is there any way to allow links to "well known, not likely to be spam" URLs with a lighter restriction? I've seen a lot of legit first-time posters who post links to ebay in the "great deals" section.

I think there is a way to do that. I am still working on some of the blacklist words/ sites then I will see if I can add a whitelist.

 

[OBasel]

3 posts is too much. Why not just block their IPs?

 

[wildchild]

Sound reasonable to me too

 

[Marsh]

3 posts and 1 like.
What if nobody like me?

 

[Patrick]

3 posts and 1 like.
What if nobody like me?

Post something better!

Actually, over the last year or so the Like button adoption has gone way up at STH.

@OBasel - IP address blocking is very hard. Most of the spam is from IP addresses in India/ Pakistan/ Vietnam. There are some blocked at the firewall level, some blocked at the board level. Of course, those using AWS, Leaseweb and others are really hard to stop since it seems like the bots or people are just using VPS's to get new IP addresses from everywhere.

This is one of a few new anti-spam changes that I am working on though.

 

[bash]

This is Xrumer and some other blackhat SEO apps. You can use certain countermeasures like SFS blocklist and using hidden register fields that these softwares will fill out. If hidden field is filled then deny registration.

Also make profiles only viewable when logged in.

Spam Management | XenForo
Get a stopforumspam API.

 

[Patriot]

Are you limiting throwaway email addresses?
Also, perhaps adding a referral name slot that would allow new users to bypass this if that user is active with X # posts.

 

[Patrick]

This is Xrumer and some other blackhat SEO apps. You can use certain countermeasures like SFS blocklist and using hidden register fields that these softwares will fill out. If hidden field is filled then deny registration.

Also make profiles only viewable when logged in.

Spam Management | XenForo
Get a stopforumspam API.

We have had honeypots installed before they were standard in XF. They worked better before XF integration.

The two big issues now are paid human spam and the scripted stuff that is done really well and bounces all over.

 

[T_Minus]

A question during registration has worked really well, the problem then becomes when you're on the 'list' with an answer pre-defined (and, well real human spammers), and need to change the question... usually registration question, akismet and maybe a wait/like/# post combo really really knocks it down.

 

[Naeblis]

Reasonable. I might even make the "days registered" longer. I know its a PITA for new members, but a paid spam bozo might just wait it out for a day and post next day, but for 7 days he'd likely go somewhere else.

Is there any way to allow links to "well known, not likely to be spam" URLs with a lighter restriction? I've seen a lot of legit first-time posters who post links to ebay in the "great deals" section.

2nd. Well known sites like eBay /Amazon ( computer categories only) / blogs ( harder) / technet microsoft

 

[pgh5278]

i would go for 48Hrs waiting period, not 24..

 

[Patrick]

I made a small adjustment to this. Looks like it blocked 31 users in the last 28 hours or so. 3 of which it should not have. I made a slight tweak which should have let those three post as usual.

 

[Quasduco]

I made a small adjustment to this. Looks like it blocked 31 users in the last 28 hours or so. 3 of which it should not have. I made a slight tweak which should have let those three post as usual.

~91% accurate on your first try is pretty darned good if you ask me...

 

[Patrick]

~91% accurate on your first try is pretty darned good if you ask me...

You say that, but there were still 3 people who could not post. Not good enough. I sent them all apology notes since I know it must be frustrating.

 

[Patrick]

4 false positive of 49 now. Still not good enough. The mods may have noticed that spam overall has been down as well.