Where does all that spam come from?

els · 2011-06-20 21:01:51

Why on earth are these spam posts increasing so much all of a sudden? Are we becoming popular?

merz1 · 2011-06-20 21:30:35

I think the forum became a popular spam target because it lately showed up on many lists of sites which still offer rel=follow links. Search for ‘links follow forum’ and you might find some of those lists.

One quote is: “Forum link building has been gaining popularity, so don’t hesitate to take advantage of a great link building resource.”

els · 2011-06-20 21:49:03

merz1 wrote:

because it lately showed up on many lists of sites which still offer rel=follow links.

But we don’t…

hcgtv · 2011-06-20 21:49:58

Once your forum gets on a spam list, it never stops. I had a PunBB forum over at PHPXref.net, took it down months ago, I still get an incredible amount of traffic on it, dumb scripts I guess.

One suggestion I made a while back is to remove the Powered By PunBB footer and Copyright line, this will prevent the forum getting on any other further lists.

gomedia · 2011-06-20 21:58:38

xpattern? Maybe they think it’s xxx-pattern!

els · 2011-06-20 22:01:47

hcgtv wrote:

One suggestion I made a while back is to remove the Powered By PunBB footer and Copyright line, this will prevent the forum getting on any other further lists.

Will it really? Isn’t just the word ‘forum’ in the URL and page title enough to find us?

hcgtv · 2011-06-20 22:30:45

Els wrote:

Will it really? Isn’t just the word ‘forum’ in the URL and page title enough to find us?

That’s true to some extent, I have an article on my site called user-forums, I get hits like user-forums/viewforum.php?id=17, every so often.

The issue with PunBB is that it became a easy target years ago, once your forum is identified to be running PunBB the spamming ensues. Which is why I suggest removing the powered by line, as do the folks at FluxBB.

wet · 2011-06-21 05:58:58

Els wrote:

But we don’t…

Don’t we?

colak · 2011-06-21 06:07:49

I’ve been banning the spammers so as to hopefully make some sense of the wave from their IPs.

the latest punbb release offers an amazing anti-spam plugin which reduced spam in the neme forum by 95%.

els · 2011-06-21 07:02:27

wet wrote:

Don’t we?

I meant the forum doesn’t use rel="follow", but perhaps the lack of it isn’t good enough and it should be rel="nofollow"?

wet · 2011-06-21 07:08:43

rel=follow is the “default”.

Thing is: Spammers spam. That’s what they do for a living.

They spam no matter whether it helps them or doesn’t do anything good at all, because mindlessly spamming everything which looks like a place to drop some links is cheaper than researching their spam target beforehand for rel= attributes and robots.txt exclusions and whatnot.

We will probably have to live with them, as this is the world Google gave us.

els · 2011-06-21 07:13:52

wet wrote:

rel=follow is the “default”.

Doh. Not enough sleep I guess.

We will probably have to live with them, as this is the world Google gave us.

That makes sense, I just had the impression that there has been a sudden increase recently and wondered what (if anything) could have caused that.

Last edited by els (2011-06-21 07:14:12)

michaelkpate · 2011-06-21 13:09:58

The forum I installed for my WoW Guild has 1,308 members, which is pretty amazing because only 2-3 of the 15-20 active members post regularly.

We don’t have a problem with posts so much as stuffing links in the profiles. I am rather disappointed in the forum software.

Bloke · 2011-06-21 13:14:03

michaelkpate wrote:

I am rather disappointed in the forum software.

Ditto for all forum software I’ve ever encountered. There has to be a better way…

Destry · 2011-06-23 13:12:36

wet wrote:

We will probably have to live with [spammers], as this is the world Google gave us.

Spammers will always exist, sure. But we don’t have to tolerate the software. Or more to the point, do everything through this forum.

In just the threads that I follow, spam post frequency already outnumbers that of regular posts. That’s bad.

I did offer two cents on a sensible course of action (moving content out). Fighting spam in fewer threads is certainly a step in the right direction (not to mention it’s the smart thing to do anyway). Granted that means troops need to rally on several fronts — .com, .org, .net… — but it would pay off in more ways than one.

I think holding off on TXP 5 to get the mothership and platforms in order is a wise move, frankly.

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#1 2011-06-20 21:01:51

Where does all that spam come from?

#2 2011-06-20 21:30:35

Re: Where does all that spam come from?

#3 2011-06-20 21:49:03

Re: Where does all that spam come from?

#4 2011-06-20 21:49:58

Re: Where does all that spam come from?

#5 2011-06-20 21:58:38

Re: Where does all that spam come from?

#6 2011-06-20 22:01:47

Re: Where does all that spam come from?

#7 2011-06-20 22:30:45

Re: Where does all that spam come from?

#8 2011-06-21 05:58:58

Re: Where does all that spam come from?

#9 2011-06-21 06:07:49

Re: Where does all that spam come from?

#10 2011-06-21 07:02:27

Re: Where does all that spam come from?

#11 2011-06-21 07:08:43

Re: Where does all that spam come from?

#12 2011-06-21 07:13:52

Re: Where does all that spam come from?

#13 2011-06-21 13:09:58

Re: Where does all that spam come from?

#14 2011-06-21 13:14:03

Re: Where does all that spam come from?

#15 2011-06-23 13:12:36

Re: Where does all that spam come from?

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