I'm a moderator on a small site. I can't afford to build my own filtering system for automated spam. But surely this is a solved problem; some sites do have built-in tools for identifying spammers and blocking their IPs and content. How can I do that on my site? Is there, for example, some centralised tool for managing such lists across sites?
For a small site, managing automated spam can be difficult without the resources of larger sites, so something like this would be invaluable.
There are many technical tools that can be integrated with existing software.
There are non intrusive methods (methods that don't require extra user interaction):
There are also intrusive methods (extra steps someone has to jump through to add content to your community)
Have you noticed that these have gotten easier recently? That is because Google updated it based on a decade of detecting humans vs bots around the world.
As part of this, we’ve recently released an update that creates different classes of CAPTCHAs for different kinds of users. This multi-faceted approach allows us to determine whether a potential user is actually a human or not, and serve our legitimate users CAPTCHAs that most of them will find easy to solve. Bots, on the other hand, will see CAPTCHAs that are considerably more difficult and designed to stop them from getting through.
A combination of intrusive and non intrusive methods is most effective. However, personal experience has shown that every intrusive method added reduces the likelihood that people will contribute. Especially if they have to jump through a hoop every time they wish to post. Most users are understanding of these methods at registration.
The non-intrusive methods run in the background and normal users may never know they even exist. This is ideal, because it doesn't interrupt their flow of ideas or affect what they need to do to submit content to you.
One of methods for identifying automated spammers: create several 'textareas' for content entry, mixing up their names and holding the right one in some key. Hide the remaining ones through CSS. If any of the dummies contains any content, it's a bot.
There are multiple companies and sites offering various capabilities. For forums, I would employ something like Akismet to block spam posts, but you can also often find out whether an IP is regarded as spam by entering it into Google and seeing if results appear, or by using a site like stopforumspam.com
On a site I'm on, there is a place where you can get free bitcoins called a "faucet". What he did was make a dummy button, and put it in before the real button, and if the dummy button got clicked from a bot trying to automate the faucet, then it would automatically ban them.
I think the same thing can be used here, by putting that in, and if a bot tries to post something, by clicking on the first link, it would automatically ban them.
I basically solely manage an old but active forum and it gets hit with spammers on a daily basis. Since the owner is MIA and the subscription for the spam filtering service (IPB...) ran out, I can't use reCAPTCHA or automated banning methods.
To catch spammers this way, I need to employ manual methods. One such method is to moderate a new user's first few posts to ensure it's non-spammy. I also look for email addresses that are clear gibberish (such as [email protected]) which often are paired with similarly gibberish usernames.
If you have automated tools, use them. Most software has some sort of spam-capturing software either built-in or as a downloadable plugin that's installed. Otherwise, instinct is your key ally.
