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FWS Massive Spam Issue

Sitebee

Sitebee

UFO Hunter
NLC
Been a FWS member for years, visited almost on a weekly basis, the last month or two ive been here more often than usual to keep myself in the loop.

I`ve got a soft spot for FWS, me being active on the forums in recent weeks ive noticed FWS has changed a hell of lot. The forums are getting spammed heavily..

Can I also ask why the free hosting database is not being updated?

Sorry to sound a pain in the ---, but it does worry me slightly.


My advice, set forum links to nofollow. Too many obsolete SEO`s spamming FWS and dragging FWS reputation down.
 
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I don't think it's just FWS. We have several forums that have been hit ridiculously hard by spambots lately. One one, I actually had to go to admin approval of new users, it was so bad.
 
Its isn't only FWS, DP has lots of spam as well. Nofollow won't help tho, the spammer will keep posting any way.
 
Every single forum on my server is getting heavily assaulted by spam on a daily basis, to the point where at least one client has actually had their account suspended for going over CPU due to excessive spam attempts on their site.

The only ones to escape it are the ones that have everything but the threads themselves blocked from search results via robots.txt and make all user supplied links nofollow- in effect greatly reducing the incentive to spam because it won't be seen by anyone but a handful of users that spot it before the moderators there do.

And even that configuration still gets tons of profile spammers from sources that don't check.

The only effective solution is active moderators to clean it up.
 
Just install a couple of anti spam plugins from vBulletin.org and FWS should be fine. On one of my forums spam is extreemly rare.
 
sander k said:
Just install a couple of anti spam plugins from vBulletin.org and FWS should be fine. On one of my forums spam is extreemly rare.
Click to expand...

Unfortunately, most of the new spam is human-driven. I have used multiple custom questions (the odds of bots guessing 3 questions correctly is basically zero) and email activation on our forums for years. There wasn't a single bot that ever got through. Now, real people are answering the questions, clicking the email confirmation, and then turning the bots loose once they get onto the forum.

The way I can can sort through the accounts now is that the majority of these are using a proxy instead of an ISP. The proxies are incredibly easy to spot, as they come from VPSs or dedicated servers, and the hostnames look nothing like those you would see with an ISP.
 
If that is true, then Peo should ingrease the amounts of posts before someone can place a link in its profile, signature ands on the boards massively. Those users would stand out, as they want to make those posts asap. I believe FWS is now using 10 posts. Add 10 more to that, or even a higher amount.
 
Another possibility would be not allowing links/signatures that aren't hosting related. I can't think of a single spammer that posts hosting related stuff in their signatures. It's always shoes or purses or such. ha ha!
 
Thats true, but I guess I consider more users then you as spammer then. I am also pointing at that hosts that visit once a week, throw their add down and leave again. Some don't even read back their old threads.
 
Oh, there are always those people too. Unfortunately, Peo said he wouldn't get rid of hosts who do that. I don't care for people who just post ads and don't actually participate in the community either, but it is what it is. Personally, the ones that really bother me are the hosts who post stupid single sentence replies that add absolutely nothing, make no sense, etc., just so they can get their signature out there. There have been a fair number of those lately as well.
 
It's been taken care of. Please report any similar cases to us.
 
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