Anti-spam: no links until a week after third post

General discussion of development ideas and the approaches taken in the 3.x branch of phpBB. The current feature release of phpBB 3 is 3.3/Proteus.
Forum rules
Please do not post support questions regarding installing, updating, or upgrading phpBB 3.3.x. If you need support for phpBB 3.3.x please visit the 3.3.x Support Forum on phpbb.com.

If you have questions regarding writing extensions please post in Extension Writers Discussion to receive proper guidance from our staff and community.
Post Reply
User avatar
jdaw1
Registered User
Posts: 3
Joined: Wed Jul 03, 2013 12:02 pm
Contact:

Anti-spam: no links until a week after third post

Post by jdaw1 »

Suggestion, in the hope that it might dis-incentivise spam. Please could there be a setting, on by default, that prohibits links until a week after the third post (obviously configurable). In particular:
• No website;
• No signature;
• No links in posts;
• At most three PMs may be sent, and those only to admins.

That gives the admins time to zap before the spammers have any gain. And spammers being efficient with their resources might prefer boards with some prospect of gain.

(PS: it isn’t clear where on the two boards feature requests should go. If this is wrong, apologies, but I have looked.)

keith10456
Registered User
Posts: 523
Joined: Sat Apr 22, 2006 10:29 pm
Contact:

Re: Anti-spam: no links until a week after third post

Post by keith10456 »

I disagree with the "on by default" part.

User avatar
jdaw1
Registered User
Posts: 3
Joined: Wed Jul 03, 2013 12:02 pm
Contact:

Re: Anti-spam: no links until a week after third post

Post by jdaw1 »

The intention was to help those new to admin’ing, who might not have anticipated the extent of the spam to be fended off. If generally helpful it would have the extra effect of making phpBB spam generally less effective. That might help more broadly.

But if folks hate the default, then not by default.

User avatar
Pony99CA
Registered User
Posts: 986
Joined: Sun Feb 08, 2009 2:35 am
Location: Hollister, CA
Contact:

Re: Anti-spam: no links until a week after third post

Post by Pony99CA »

First, using a good Q&A CAPTCHA should stop most bots.

Second, a better way would be to have a Can use hyperlinks permission (similar to those for Flash and images) which would disable all links (URL tags and "magic" links in posts, PMs and signatures and possibly disable the Website profile field). Then you could turn that permission on for the Newly Registered Users group.

The original proposal seems like too much of a kluge and too rigid (one week after the third post?), so thumbs down.

Steve
Silicon Valley Pocket PC (http://www.svpocketpc.com)
Creator of manage_bots and spoof_user (ask me)
Need hosting for a small forum with full cPanel & MySQL access? Contact me or PM me.

Danielx64
Registered User
Posts: 304
Joined: Mon Feb 08, 2010 3:42 am

Re: Anti-spam: no links until a week after third post

Post by Danielx64 »

Pony99CA wrote:First, using a good Q&A CAPTCHA should stop most bots.

Second, a better way would be to have a Can use hyperlinks permission (similar to those for Flash and images) which would disable all links (URL tags and "magic" links in posts, PMs and signatures and possibly disable the Website profile field). Then you could turn that permission on for the Newly Registered Users group.

The original proposal seems like too much of a kluge and too rigid (one week after the third post?), so thumbs down.

Steve

I second that :)

Frug
Registered User
Posts: 57
Joined: Thu Jul 02, 2009 3:33 am

Re: Anti-spam: no links until a week after third post

Post by Frug »

*Daniel wrote:
Pony99CA wrote:First, using a good Q&A CAPTCHA should stop most bots.

Second, a better way would be to have a Can use hyperlinks permission (similar to those for Flash and images) which would disable all links (URL tags and "magic" links in posts, PMs and signatures and possibly disable the Website profile field). Then you could turn that permission on for the Newly Registered Users group.

The original proposal seems like too much of a kluge and too rigid (one week after the third post?), so thumbs down.

Steve

I second that :)
Agreed.

Though I have never found captchas to be effective. Certainly you shouldn't expect new forum owners to know that it won't work with default settings. A few security questions works wonderfully for me since bots can't figure them out. The installer could ask you to choose a better method.

Danielx64
Registered User
Posts: 304
Joined: Mon Feb 08, 2010 3:42 am

Re: Anti-spam: no links until a week after third post

Post by Danielx64 »

Just the heads up, I'm writing a mod that will let you control what group can use the URL BBcode :)

Link: https://www.phpbb.com/community/viewtop ... &t=2189185

User avatar
RMcGirr83
Registered User
Posts: 360
Joined: Fri Mar 09, 2007 1:51 am
Contact:

Re: Anti-spam: no links until a week after third post

Post by RMcGirr83 »

Do not hire Christian Bullock he won't finish the job and will keep your money

Post Reply