Off the Top of My Head

Forum Spammers Driving Me Crazy

Probably one of the hardest parts of starting or running a forum is to not only get it started but to keep it going. Coming in a close second however is fending off spammers. There are tons of people that preach how forum spamming doesn’t work when it comes to ranking for loads of reasons. They range from Google knowing it is spam and not counting it to the fact your messages will get erased so why bother. I have my own opinions on what works however just the fact that people will go through so many hoops en masse seems to make you believe it does have some effect. It is the lengths they go through that have put me over the edge.

 In the early days before one of my forums ranked, all was good. Sure I got a couple of spammers using automated tools but they were pretty easy to control in those days. As I started ranking better though, the automated bots started hitting. Most never posted but instead put some crap in their profile. Those were easy to deal with as all I did is change the settings so that if you have less then 1 post, you aren’t displayed in the user list. That way they can spam all they want since neither I nor the SE’s would ever see it.

As time went by though, just because of sheer volume the posts started flooding in. Because they use different IPs and email addresses, individual bans were useless. Instead I did what I hate about forums. I enabled the Captcha. It’s a horribly annoying thing for real users and I absolutely hate it but the bots forced my hand. Of course with a forum growing in standing every day in regards to the Search Engines (and of course that is what these automated programs seek out), I soon had spammers who thought it worthy to add a human touch. I suppose when the possible benefit reaches a certain level, they must feel that it is worth it to hand enter the Captcha. I imagine a program just lines them up for them and they pay some kid or person in a more cost efficient country like $2 an hour. These are the guys that have driven me insane lately.

Now, with all this stupid fuss, I made a rash decision. The forums revenue comes exclusively from lurkers who read like crazy and click ads but never register or want to post. So I decided to require Admin verification for new members. I was figuring there only had to be a few joins a day and I could approve them one by one and watch them. To me surprise I got like 100 verification emails on the first day alone. That was a number that amazed me and I know for a fact that out of that 700 a week only 1 might actually be legit.

So I have decided to just not approve any new members. Its a ridiculous move but I am sick of all the spammers. The forum still operates in a major profit with existing members and lurkers so I just decided maybe I don’t want it to grow. It has allowed me to concentrate on more efficient money makers with a fraction of the stress while not actually “shutting down” the forum and losing existing revenue.

There is an upside I didn’t count on too. I got a few links from some blogs where they were asking why its difficult to get an account at my forum. Two of those links were on PR6 pages without a nofollow. Maybe I should close all my sites

This entry was posted on Tuesday, December 5th, 2006 at 4:48 pm and is filed under Forums. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.