Suggestions For Dealing with Spam Bots

[Pyreaux]

So far, new users can post new topics only in the Social Hall until they reach a certain number of posts (25). The spam bot posts multiple new topics in the Social Hall, suggesting everything is working within the limits set but it's still spamming.

Mormon Dialogue uses Invision Community, which has standard anti-spam tools, here are things likely not tried:

Update anti-bot tools:

Some bots bypass older protections.

Anti-spam Plug-ins:

Auto-flagging for first posts with links or repeated phrases. Enable auto-moderation for topics with suspicious keywords or URLs.

New Topic Creation Limit:

Probably 1 topic per day in the Social Hall to reduce spam volume. This is a typical throttle setting.

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Spam:

1. a meat-like product, rumored to contain a mixture of ham and pork (it stands for "SPiced hAM"), made popular when it was distributed to soldiers on the fronts during World War II.

2. the focus of a sketch on Monty Python's Flying Circus involving a diner which featured meals such as "spam, egg, spam, spam, bacon and spam" and "spam, spam, spam, spam, spam, spam, baked beans, spam, spam, spam, and spam". Trying to find anything in that diner which did not have Spam quickly became quite difficult. This idea was been carried over onto the internet for when someone posts the same thing in thousands of newsgroups, or when one person (or a group of people) fill up a newsgroup with off-topic posts, or many copies of the same off-topic post, was called "spamming the net"; the individual posts are called "spam" in reference to this skit.

Edited June 13, 2025 by Pyreaux

[Calm]

39 minutes ago, Pyreaux said:

New Topic Creation Limit:
Probably 1 topic per day in the Social Hall, to reduce spam volume. This is a typical throttle setting.

That is actually a very good idea as the vast majority of actual new posters only start one thread a day.

Assuming that is possible to set.

Edited June 12, 2025 by Calm

[Calm]

You apparently called down the wrath of hell upon us….

Either that or exceptional timing.

This feels intentional.  And petty.

Can someone give a site name to spam bots to attack?

There are 165 pages of spam at this time in Social Hall and another page has been added while I have been posting.

Edited June 13, 2025 by Calm

[Stargazer]

Ignore. Just testing something

Edited July 18, 2025 by Stargazer