My forum has been inundated with spam over the last few months.

It is everything from Viagra, ringtones, and online poker. It looks automated, but it's possible that someone is manually doing it also.

Has anyone also seen this problem? How are you coping with it?

My moderators have been manually deleting posts, but there are sometimes 100 posts in a day.

Rich

Hi, Rich:

Most people handle this by requiring registration in order to post. I see that you allow everyone who comes in to post, whether or not they are registered. You might consider changing that: let everyone VIEW the forums, but require registration to post. This will take care of the bulk of the spam you are suffering.

I've just been inundated with spammers too. Far too many to continually have to monitor them. Is there anything like there is on blogspot where they have to enter a scrambled graphic number that would keep them from automatically registering and posting?

I'm at my wits' end and am considering just shutting the whole thing down.

Currently, the feature you described is not present.

As Lori mentioned, requiring registration is usually a good way to cut down on spam. You have several other choices that could keep this from becoming too hands-on for you.

1) You could use trigger words to automatically send anything that contains words like "v1agra," "loan," or whatever your spammers are shilling, to the approval queue. This would still require a check on your part, but you can adjust the settings to not display the content until it's approved, and you won't have to go hunting for posts.

2) You could turn on manual approval. Of course, this means that you'll have to sort through the applications, but it would slow down on the incoming traffice.

3) You can ban the IP addresses of known spammers. You have the option of viewing the IP address of any post by hitting the "edit" button of the post and then hitting "options." In the "Registration" section of the eve control panel, you can choose "Registration Banning," and block the IP address in question by adding it to the IP address list.

I have also been inundated with poker and prescription spam and am wit's end. I use UBB Threads 6.2.1 and I have questions on how to deal with this.

1. Requiring registration:
I've gone into "Edit Config settings" and set "Require users to verify their email before account is activated?" to "Yes". Is this the setting for requiring registration?

I do not want to approve new users, so I set that to "No".
I also set "Allow users to change their display name?" to "No".
And "Only one username per e-mail address".
Is this all the smart way to do this now?

2. Cleaning up my Board.
Is there a better way than having to go in and delete individual posts...which is driving me CRAZY! There are hundreds now!
Isn't there anyway to search for all posts that say "poker" and delete them then... Or all posts that say "viagra" and delete them.

Please help!!!

Hi, MOTHERS,

The instructions I posted above are for the eve product, which is the focus of this community. The philosophy behind them may be correct, but for specific instructions for your product, you should check out the UBB.Threads support forms at ubbcentral.com:

http://www.ubbcentral.com/forums/ubbthreads.php

Hi, we've been having some trouble with spam on our BBs as well. The person who managed our BBs before I turned off registration and now I can't figure out how to turn it on again. Can anyone help? Thanks, Carolyn

Hello Carolyn,

The option to enable registrations should be in the Control Panel at:

CP -> Eve -> Members -> Registration Settings

There you should see an option for "Permit New Registrations" I believe that is what you are looking for.

Cheers,

Permit new reg is already checked off. We don't require people to register, anyone can post on the BB. I'm trying to figure that part out. THanks!

i figured it out i think--thanks!