The best method you have found to tackle spam?

[Shortie]

Spam is something we as webmasters always have to deal with, there will be times when we barely see it and other times we end up seeing too much of it and it can seem like an attack of the spam bots.

As a webmaster yourself, what method have you found best to tackle spam on your forums or blogs?

 

[Arantor]

A unique challenge that can’t easily be automated is not hard for a programmer to knock together but if I share the details… it weakens it.

Let’s just say, I once had a forum that inadvertently shared its name with a popular Minecraft mod. So I got a lot of traffic because awesome SEO - but I got minimal spam (even in the guest posting area) because of some not at all obvious blockers.

Some of the more obvious ones I put into SMF 2.1 many years ago and they were broadly effective (still are against the worst kinds), but XF etc has many of the same things now.

 

[Cory]

Are spambots even a thing these days? At least when you have a secure CAPTCHA or other means to deter them. I've had to only ban three "spammers" of 1600+ members on my board so far and I'm pretty sure they were all real people.

 

[Arantor]

Yes, they're a thing. reCAPTCHA isn't even that strong a deterrent; I know where I could buy 1000 solved CAPTCHAs for $2.50 (it used to be lower).

The main reason is that Jcink is sufficiently low value for them, they don't bother. (Many of the target forums are found by searching for the forum copyright string in the footer as a target baseline, though by no means the only way.)

 

[Cory]

I remember InvisionFree used to be a HUGE target for spambots, but this was back in the days when forums were much more widely used and popular. I just figured it would be similar on Jcink if for some reason it had poor security for registration. I can understand people wanting to direct spambots to more valuable/popular software, however.

 

[Arantor]

The landscape has moved; reCAPTCHA is a good baseline - but if they don't go looking for you in the first place, it sort of doesn't matter.

They still target based on the footer wording but Invision Community is, well, called Invision Community these days, not Invision Power Board (and it hasn't been called that in a while) and because Jcink sites aren't typically large, it's not worth the spammers' time in targeting them because while they can automate joining thousands of communities, thousands of *tiny* communities isn't worth it at all to them.

It's been an arms race for most of the last 20 years.

 

[Cory]

True, spam advertisements are all about getting the word out and oftentimes, generating revenue. I can understand them wanting to hit the larger communities.

 

[Arantor]

The economics of spam are interesting; the cost to get registered on a forum is fractions of a penny at their scale, and it only takes one or two people engaging for it to be worth it.