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Help with Spam settings please

alistairgd66
alistairgd66
in General Questions

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Posted

I was having terrible problems with bots posting lots of posts with links in them.

I fixed this by configuring the forum to hide any new posts with links in them. However this was also affecting legitimate members posting links so was not a good solution.

I have two questions.

1. I cannot find the setting I used to configure the forum to require post approval for all posts with a link in them. I used the search option in Admin to try and find it, but cannot find it. Please signpost me to it so I can switch it off.

2. A standard method of solving this issue to restrict NEW members from posting links, while allowing existing members with a post history to post links. However I cannot see how to configure this in Admin...?

Thanks.

 

Edited by alistairgd66

  1. This can be found in ACP -> System -> Posting -> Links & Email Addresses.
  2. This does not currently exist. You can moderate all links, no links, or select links (whether that is via a whitelist or blacklist).

Alternatively though, you may wish to take a look at your Registration process. Currently, while you're using a CAPTCHA and Q&A challenges, we find hCAPTCHA to be more effective in blocking spam and you only have 1 Q&A challenge questions which is easy for a bot to resolve. I would suggest making multiple Q&A challenge questions which are related to your niche but not easily Google-able but your audience will easily solve yet take bots a long time or never.

Final considerations, if it is still rampant after applying the above, you may wish for your default member group to have their first post be approved by a moderator. This can be configured in ACP -> Members -> Groups -> edit group -> Content.

 

  • Author

Thanks Jim for the helpful suggestions - I will try these.

Quote

A standard method of solving this issue to restrict NEW members from posting links, while allowing existing members with a post history to post links.

I recall such an anti-spam feature was available in forums years ago - I may even be thinking about ikonboard! Regardless - can this be added to a feature request, perhaps to the Automatic Content Moderation section.

Edited by alistairgd66

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