[Forum] Fighting Profile Spam

[petertdavis]

One of the biggest challenges for forum admins currently is the massive amounts of profile spam we're attacked with day in and day out. In the past, our moderators could locate and eliminate spam quite easily, as they actually posted to get their link in. Now, spammers are happy to just create a profile and put the spam link in the profile.

Is there any way to remove the "Home Page URL" field in a user profile?
Can we deactivate the "Home Page URL" field on a per usergroup basis?
Can anyone who's registered with the "Home Page URL" populated be put into a moderation queue?

Any other suggestions on how to combat this?

[worried]

How about disabling that user group's "Can Edit Own Profile?" (It's under General Permissions)

Personally, I like to keep all those fields open. Since spammers fill them in it's easier for me to tell who's who.

[GamerPerfection]

Rather than disable the Home Page URL which would take it away from non spammers, why not just block spammers from registering on your forums. There are Mods (I can't link to them here) that can do that. I use one of them myself and i've not had a single spammer join my site.

[petertdavis]

How about disabling that user group's "Can Edit Own Profile?" (It's under General Permissions)

Personally, I like to keep all those fields open. Since spammers fill them in it's easier for me to tell who's who.

That's an interesting idea I hadn't thought of... then I could set a promotion to a new usergroup which would allow full use of the profile. I'm going to try that out on one of my boards and see how it fits. Thanks.

[petertdavis]

Rather than disable the Home Page URL which would take it away from non spammers, why not just block spammers from registering on your forums. There are Mods (I can't link to them here) that can do that. I use one of them myself and i've not had a single spammer join my site.

Those mods do help, but when you're dealing with tens of thousands of members, hundreds of new registrations a day, across a dozen forums, it's not enough. The mods are helpful, but not perfect against the bots let alone the hand-registered spam.

[dsimms]

Those mods do help, but when you're dealing with tens of thousands of members, hundreds of new registrations a day, across a dozen forums, it's not enough. The mods are helpful, but not perfect against the bots let alone the hand-registered spam.

You can not do much about hands on spammers...until they do something that you can ban them for.
as for the auto junk, set some good mods up, setup some registeration questions up that only humans would know,
and you should be able to block even 95%-99% of bot spammers...as for the profile, like someone mentioned,
set all reg members to no profile/sig until they reach x amount of posts, then they are upgraded to a level
where they can use sigs and profiles. Most people are trying to get a free ride from you at your expense...
I do not mind giving some rides as long as they earn their ride...

it also good idea to have some mods on hand that can deal with spammers also.
if you have a forum the size you are saying, then you should have mods....

[chaz7979]

I too am interested if anyone has a success story they would like to share. I get a half dozen or so new registrations per day by humans who just want to post profile spam. Sometimes I delete them mid registration but, they keep coming back. You would think this farm of workers would see that there time is wasted on my site but they come back day after day and I delete day after day.

I wonder if hiding this info from non registered users (search engines) would be enough to deter humans? Would they catch on and just abuse another forum down the line? I am wondering if anyone has hidden these fields from non registered users and seen a dip in abuse?

Also, how would I do that so I can report my findings?