Best spam prevention methods?

DarthHazard Level 1

August 13, 2017, 3:17 pm

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Best spam prevention methods?

It can get annoying sometimes when you own a forum because of all the bots and sometimes people spamming your site with useless content or advertisements. The bots used by spammers are getting a lot more intelligent and that means that some anti-spam methods just don't work anymore. I've however noticed that, personally, custom questions work best to stop bots. For some reason, questions like "What colour is a banana?" seem to be impossible for bots to answer. What anti-spam methods work best for you?

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overcast

overcast

If you have WordPress blog then Akismet seems to be a good option. They are included into the jetpack plugin. Also you can download the standalone plugin. And there are paid and free plans for the plugin. It is going to stop most of your spam very easily. You can prevent a lot of spam using that plugin. As they have service which can be good for blocking bots and spammers.

7 years ago

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Tronia

Tronia

Yep, I agree. CAPTCHA or Akismet are two best options. As far as I know, Akismet is also integrated into the Disqus plugin which you can use on your WordPress websites. I honestly think that if you choose either one of these two that you should have 0 bots. Hell, I only used CAPTCHA and it did the trick

7 years ago

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overcast

overcast

Captcha can be bad for the users. i'd never use captcha to login to my site. But I'd use the akismet and other bot detection tools. This way I can surely prevent the spam. Also this can help me moderate the comments too. As you can see that seems to be helping a lot so far. I would also use the other WordPress security tools. That can be helpful in many ways.

7 years ago

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Corzhens

Corzhens

Maybe that spam blocker is another feather on the cap of Wordpress. It seems that Wordpress is on a continuing research and development just like Google with its ways in improving the features for the benefit of the users. Spam is growing and is now a big business that maybe in the near future the spam blockers will have a license because some companies are already experiencing a problem with excessive number of spam.

6 years ago

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overcast

overcast

They seem to be finding new ways to spam. So it's always a good idea for the stopping the spam. I think that is one reason akismet is a good plugin to work with. And few more plugins that can protect you from the typical spam patterns. it's a good option to work with as well.

6 years ago

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Tronia

Tronia

Haha, that seems to be a good method but I think that the best one is still CAPTCHA. To be specific the reCAPTCHA that is made by Google and we all know how high quality their tools are.

It has always worked for me and I never had to use anything else. I suggest that you implement it in on your websites and see the bots disappear in thin air

If you have never heard about it check this link: https://www.google.com/recaptcha

7 years ago

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hermessantos

hermessantos

I installed the Disqus plugin on my sites. This helped me control the spam that came from the comments. This really was a big problem.

7 years ago

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overcast

overcast

Yes disqus can get rid of the bots and the spam. They read the IP address and mark it as unsafe. So based on that we already get filtered spam. So it can be one good option. Another similar option is intensedebate. That plugin is also same as disqus and worth using in that case.

7 years ago

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peachpurple

peachpurple

I agree that CAPTCHA is still the best way to prevent spamming but it can be annoying when the picture shown and the instructions matches yet still consider incorrect. Anyway, that proves the patience of the user. I prefer the number guessing CAPTCHA than the scenery type.

7 years ago

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hermessantos

hermessantos

I think the personalized questions is a good option. I find interesting the random characters and the option for you to choose images. Example: select facade images from stores, among others.

7 years ago

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vinaya

vinaya

I believing having a captcah is the best spam prevention method. However, captcha also has a disadvantage, it will deter the genuine commentator. When I visit the site and want to leave comments and I see captcha, I immediately move away from the site. I don't bother to answer the captcha just because I was to leave comments. However, if I am a registered user on the site and I want to leave comments, I sometimes don't mind captcha. This draws to a conclusion that for registered users captcha is a no problem but for visitors, it can become a great nuisance.

7 years ago

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Corzhens

Corzhens

I agree that captcha is one of thebest tools to prevent spamming. And I also agree that captcha is also a
deterrent for legitimate commenter because it is not easy to solve the captcha
especially the captcha that is using numbers and letters that are presented in
a vague display. If I have a website that is being plagued by spammers, my
recourse would be to hire a virtual assistant to check on the spam posts and
ban the IP address. It will take time but it will come to a point that the
spammer will run out of IP address to use.

6 years ago

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vinaya

vinaya

You can use security plugins on your website to stop spammers. I use wordfence defense which helps me to identify real visitors and bot visitors, as well as the potential threat on the website, I use a plugin called loginizer than stops unauthorize login into your website. I am talking about wordpress site.

6 years ago

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jitendra0341

jitendra0341

I know that captcha is the best spam prevention method. There are some other methods to do that. Turn on the spam prevention micro service. It moderate all post by 24 hours. Moderate all posts that are repetitive.Create keyword interceptors. It prevent content from being created at all . Prompts the user by saying " sorry this content is not allowed". Change open group to members. Change open group to members only so that users need to join in order to post in it. This creates barrier for the spammers to do.

7 years ago

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augusta

augusta

I use Captcha on my blog and it has been working for me.I will also check these other methods mentioned here to see if it more effect that Captcha

7 years ago

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ballyhara

ballyhara

Captcha is the must because is super easy and effective. But the new reCaptcha has an extra bonus. Basically it depends on the old Captcha, but the new one offers support for people visually impaired, also its way to fight spam is by continuously changing, which works really good.

7 years ago

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kgord

kgord

I am not a fan of captcha's but I know many sites depend on using them to keep their websites free from bots. It is just one of the things that we must learn to use if we want to keep spam from keeping into our content. Some of the captcha methods seem really cumbersome and not user friendly though. I guess they can be helpful in preventing spam, phishing and other things of that type.

7 years ago

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PinkTurtle

PinkTurtle

Use captcha's or Why don't you moderate your comments. Its's a bit of hard work but if you really want to supervise every single comment then I think that's what you need to do because not only bots make silly question as " What color is a Banana?" as you described...

7 years ago

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Fuzyon

Fuzyon

Captcha is your best friend when you're trying to prevent spam on your website. I would also recommend accepting accounts manually - it's tideous but you can prevent spam accounts from registering to your site.

7 years ago

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simplymh

simplymh

Many use the re-CAPTCHA but I am not a fan of it too much!

7 years ago

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JoeMilford

JoeMilford

I use CAPTCHA, and it seems to be efficient and just fine for my purposes. It's also cheap and user-friendly.

7 years ago

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jpyy

jpyy

For forums, asking a really difficult question and/or asking people to spell a word backward (at user registration) seems to work most of the time. Nonetheless, spambots are getting smarter. On one forum, for instance, I had to add more questions than normal.

Anyway, the normal captcha doesn't seem to work well, but I haven't tried the other spam prevention methods, apart from questions.

7 years ago

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Jeane

Jeane

Spam fighting services and human intervention are the best spam prevention methods. While captcha does stop some bots, it doesn't stop all spammers. Why? A number of those keen on spamming will get captcha-solving services to help them get past that first line of defense.

Since spammers will therefore gain access one way or another, the admin has to regularly look at newly posted content and delete spam. Forum members could help too by reporting spam when they see it.

6 years ago

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