Red Squirrel
[H]F Junkie
- Joined
- Nov 29, 2009
- Messages
- 9,211
My first site, which I still somewhat maintain, is a typical tech site with articles, a forum, and news postings from other sites that send mail to my news@ address. It's been around for almost 10 years.
At one point, it got so infiltrated with spammers, I had to shut down forum registrations until I could get around to figuring something out. I'd wake up in the morning to find out the forum has been flooded with 100's of spam posts, all nonsense posts like thousands of links, or porno pictures etc. The site pretty much died off due to this.
Anyway I decided it was time to revive that site. I made it so new users who register do not show up in the members list, or latest user (as to not clutter with names like fjds802th0yfy) and when they post, they can see their own post, but nobody else can. Their post does not show up in latest post, or any of those areas on the forum. When I go on the forum, if there's posts pending approval I see a list, and I can allow/deny. If I hit allow, then it lets it through, and further posts from that member will be allowed - at least till spammers figure this out, and make their first post legit, then I'll have to keep them in a validate status longer. If I hit deny, it deletes every post and thread (which are not yet visible to public) by that user, and deletes that user. Nobody ever saw the spam, so it was ineffective, which is the goal here.
I opened registrations tonight and already got two spammers and I deleted their accounts right away since I happened to be in the admin cp. My system works, and nobody saw the spam. But point is, by tomorrow I'll probably have like 100 posts to validate.
Is there anything specific on a website that makes it so attractive to spammers? Or is it just one of the downfalls of being highly visible on Google? (lot of common search terms lead to the site)
It has not been updated in years, I'm wondering if just coding it from scratch, and giving it a new layout and general overhaul would do any good. I'm wondering if spammers keep a list of "run down" sites as targets, or something.
At one point, it got so infiltrated with spammers, I had to shut down forum registrations until I could get around to figuring something out. I'd wake up in the morning to find out the forum has been flooded with 100's of spam posts, all nonsense posts like thousands of links, or porno pictures etc. The site pretty much died off due to this.
Anyway I decided it was time to revive that site. I made it so new users who register do not show up in the members list, or latest user (as to not clutter with names like fjds802th0yfy) and when they post, they can see their own post, but nobody else can. Their post does not show up in latest post, or any of those areas on the forum. When I go on the forum, if there's posts pending approval I see a list, and I can allow/deny. If I hit allow, then it lets it through, and further posts from that member will be allowed - at least till spammers figure this out, and make their first post legit, then I'll have to keep them in a validate status longer. If I hit deny, it deletes every post and thread (which are not yet visible to public) by that user, and deletes that user. Nobody ever saw the spam, so it was ineffective, which is the goal here.
I opened registrations tonight and already got two spammers and I deleted their accounts right away since I happened to be in the admin cp. My system works, and nobody saw the spam. But point is, by tomorrow I'll probably have like 100 posts to validate.
Is there anything specific on a website that makes it so attractive to spammers? Or is it just one of the downfalls of being highly visible on Google? (lot of common search terms lead to the site)
It has not been updated in years, I'm wondering if just coding it from scratch, and giving it a new layout and general overhaul would do any good. I'm wondering if spammers keep a list of "run down" sites as targets, or something.
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