Today I was occupied with fending off a major spam attack on the Goodsol Discussion Forum.
Since I implemented some anti-spam measures a year or two ago, not a single spam posting has ever even made it to posting on the forum, but it sure hasn't stopped them from trying. Today, a spammer trying to sell various prescription drugs tried the biggest spam attempt yet. At one point, he was trying to post a spam message every minute.
None of these messages came even close to getting posted, as they had to get my approval before being posted. However, it was a pain because each attempt was generating an email and it was hard to get anything done with so many spam posting attempt emails coming through.
So I had to step up the spam protection on the forum some more. I banned some IP addresses, even some entire countries, but finally nailed them by banning posts with certain words in them from even being submitted (let alone posted). That stopped them dead, as it is tough to sell Viagra and such without using the word "Viagra".
The filter is smart enough to ban "cialis" without banning "socialism", although there's no need for socialism on a solitaire discussion board.
Now the spammers seem to have gone elsewhere.
That was very annoying. I got spam on my forums too, luckily not about viagra and etc.
If you use phpBB I recommend to check their plug-in pages since they have some very good anti-spam tools!
Posted by: Winter Wolves Games | March 28, 2006 at 01:47 PM
That's terrible about the spam, I'm going to keep this in mind *IF* I ever decided to start forums.
Posted by: Sheila Manning | April 20, 2006 at 03:18 PM