Topic: Spammers let in/Real people kept out.

Spammers let in/Real people kept out.

joesegal
Participant

@joesegal

8 years, 11 months ago
For all the years I’ve been working with this great software project I have encountered the same problem and it’s the main thing keeping me from using Buddypress consistently.
1. As soon as I allow registrations I am flooded with spammers selling knock off sunglasses and other “stuff” creating groups (I know I can limit group creation but I want people to create groups) and posting their spam all over my site. They seem to get around any antispam plugin I’ve tried!
2. Real people who signup never get to use the site because their confirmation email either doesn’t get to them or isn’t seen by them because it goes straight to the spam box on their email client so I end up with a list of unactivated signups I have to manually approve but by that time most users have simply assumed my site is broken and abandoned it completely!
So to recap the people I want in can’t get in and those I dont want in I can’t keep out.

What do you all do about this assuming you’ve had the same happen to you?

Thanks,
Joe

Viewing 3 replies - 1 through 3 (of 3 total)

Henry Wright
Moderator

@henrywright

8 years, 11 months ago

You could activate some kind of registration honeypot to keep the spam bots out. This technique has worked well for me in the past.

Example: https://en-gb.wordpress.org/plugins/registration-honeypot/

Regarding the confirmation email problem, this seems to be a common problem and one that isn’t easily solved. Many things can result in email going into spam, most are usually related to your mail server setup or the user’s own spam filter settings.

joesegal
Participant

@joesegal

8 years, 11 months ago

Thanks Henry!

If I disable email confirmation then it opens the site to even more spammers.
What do you do?
Henry Wright
Moderator

@henrywright

8 years, 11 months ago
If I disable email confirmation then it opens the site to even more spammers.

Personally, I’d never do that because as you say it opens the door to spoof emails, and therefore much more spam.

I’d reach out to your users and try to find out what is causing the emails to go into their spam folders. For example, do they have custom spam filters set up? If so, what criteria do they use to spam an email?

Also, you can do things from a server point of view:
- Be sure you’re not on any blacklists
- Check with your host that your DKIM, SPF, sender ID and domain keys are properly set
- Try Googling for more things (there’s lots to look out for)
Refs:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DomainKeys_Identified_Mail
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sender_Policy_Framework
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sender_ID
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DomainKeys

Viewing 3 replies - 1 through 3 (of 3 total)

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