Forums are very useful for Search Engine Optimisation. Often forums have an option to its members to have a signature link as a reference. Members can add their websites or blogs and also their favorite quotes in their signature links and that signature link appears in each and every time they post any thread or reply to any thread in natural way. But some people start misusing forums and start spamming forums by making posts that have little or no meaning and useless to other members.
Forum spamming is a black Hat
SEO technique where users repeat the same word or phrase over and over, but differs from multiple posting which sometimes has malicious intent. This is a common trolling technique. It can also be traditional spam, unpaid advertisements that are in breach of the forum rules.
Below are some useful tips that can help a lot to avoid forum spam:
1.
Using Captcha or Human Validation:
Having an option for captcha or human validation may help you a lot to avoid spam to your forum. In this option there is an application where people have to submit some characters into a box that appears in an image along with that box and randomly change each time for new post.
To enable this in vbulletin, go to your
ADMIN CP ->USER BANNING OPTIONS -> HUMAN VERIFICATION MANAGER There are three Human Verification options provided as of vBulletin 3.7.
Image Verification - Image verification presents a series of distorted numbers and letters that the user is required to enter. Either GD2 or ImageMagick support is required from your PHP server in order to use this option. This is the classic option that most users are accustomed to encountering. Disabled users will be blocked with this option.
Question & Answer Verification - Question & Answer verification employs a random question challenge with a predefined set of appropriate answers. The questions and answers must be defined by the administrator. This allows the questions to be tailored to the forum content as well as preventing a common set of questions from becoming prevalent across a large section of vBulletin forums. Maintaining unique questions is required for this option to be successful. This option should be accessible to any impaired user that is able to use the Internet.
reCAPTCHA -
reCAPCTHA employs an image verification provided by recaptcha.net. Two obscured words are provided for the user to enter. This feature offers the user the option to choose an audio test.
2.
Using Email Verification: Make sure to have an option for Email verification that ensures members to activate an email before they can post anything. That includes a profile link which emailed to members email and member has to click on that to activate his or her membership.
To enable this go to
ADMIN CP ->USER REGISTRATION OPTIONS ->VERIFY EMAIL ADDRESS IN REGISTRATION->YES
3.
Limiting Number Of Link In Signature: Some people use to have a lot of links in their signature links to spam a forum. Make sure to have limited number of links to use as signature links and having maximum of three links will be good.
4.
Avoid Posting of Links From New Users: Do not allow new members to post live links of any other site no matter that is useful or not. It will better idea to allow new members to post live links only after they become regular and active member of the forum and have posted a number of useful posts.
5.
Limiting Number Of Posts for Signature Links: Do not allow new users for signature links in their posts. Make sure to allow signature links to new members only after posting a number of useful posts or threads to the forum. It will be good to allow signature links after at least 20 or 30 regular posts by a new member.
6.
Limiting Post Editing Time: It is recommended to limit the time of editing any post because some spammers edit older posts and either post blatant advertising links, or else hide them in punctuation and invisible images.
7.
Block Common Email domains or IPs: Block same email domains or IPs from your admin panel or by using .htaccess file if you find that these are not natural and being used to spam the forum.
See this thread:
Spam Email Addresses
These are some of the most common spammers. Not all of them by far, but its some of the main ones used by spammers. To ban these email addresses, go to your
ADMIN CP -> vBULLETIN OPTIONS -> USER BANNING OPTIONS -> BANNED EMAIL ADDRESSESNote that partial email addresses are matched from the end of the address unless you enable "Aggressive Email Banning" below. Therefore if you ban @example.com you will ban user@example.com, but if you ban @example that user will not be banned. If you enable "Aggressive Email Banning", user@example.com would be banned by @example.
If the email address of a user attempting to register or change their email address matches any of the addresses you specify here will see a no-permission error. For example, if you have banned 'example.com' then a user attempting to use 'someone@example.com' will be rejected.
8.
Having An Active Moderator Team: Having a team of active moderators is very much necessary to watch out your forums on regular basis that will help members to solve their unsolved queries and also warn or ban members immediately if they do not follow guidelines or involve in spamming activity.
Above tips will sure help you to avoid forum spam and make your forums free from spam.
Source
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[How To] Avoid Spam On Your vBulletin Forum 
