Question for forum owners spam related

[Stocks]

How do you ban an ip address

I got some moron whos pming people spam, I banned him yesterday but that did'nt work so I deleted his account and now he just signed up and is pming people again.

[PokerNations]

Banning an IP address doesn't always stop them, as they can use another IP.

What I'd recommend instead is changing your member accounts so that it restricts the # of PM's that can be sent based on how long they've been a member or how any posts they've made (i.e. 0-50 posts, 1 PM per day, 50-100 posts, 5 PM's per day, etc)

Also would help if you tell us what forum software you're using (phpbb, vbulletin, etc) and what version, because there are different settings for each.

[gooderpoker]

Man I hated spam bots...
When I owned my forum I also set reqirements so members could not post links until they had 5 posts.

[imteaz]

Man I hated spam bots...
When I owned my forum I also set reqirements so members could not post links until they had 5 posts.

How do you set it up on v bulletin forum?

[Stocks]

Good idea man I'll check out limiting pm's

I got Vbulletin 3.8

Banning an IP address doesn't always stop them, as they can use another IP.

What I'd recommend instead is changing your member accounts so that it restricts the # of PM's that can be sent based on how long they've been a member or how any posts they've made (i.e. 0-50 posts, 1 PM per day, 50-100 posts, 5 PM's per day, etc)

Also would help if you tell us what forum software you're using (phpbb, vbulletin, etc) and what version, because there are different settings for each.

[gooderpoker]

How do you set it up on v bulletin forum?

Back in the day I did not use V bulletin. But It must have an option similar.
If I remember correctly I created a usergroup and set the requirements of 5 post to gain the ability to post links and send PM's

Then I set it as the default group, so all new members were put into this usergroup.

Hope this helps

[Unknown Webmaster]

The ideal thing to do would be to get everything he sends deleted while he still think that people are receiving his PMs. That way you won't have to jump through hoops to keeping him out.

I'm not sure if there are a plugin that does this, since I have never run a public forum.

You can read about it here:
http://www.caveyourtrolls.com/ (currently down)

Alternate description of "Cave Your Trolls":
Don’t Kill The Trolls But Feed Them - Henk van Ess's Search Bistro

[Graham]

Great vb plugin...

One-touch Spam Ban and Cleanup - vBulletin.org Forum

[Michael Martinez]

VBulletin comes with robust banning and use permissions options. You can look at the banning options under "VBulletin Options" in the AdminCP (Control Panel).

You can ban by portion of IP address (which is usually more effective). Thus, you want to enter:

125.125.125

rather than

125.125.125.125

What this does is ban 256 addresses within one block. Depending on what ISP the guy is using, it may not hurt your traffic. You can search for user activity by IP address to see what the impact would be.

You can also ban email addresses (or their domains) to prevent people from signing up regardless of what IP address they use.

You can limit user PM activity, too.

[vmlinuz]

If it's a bot, captchas can help you. Otherwise use what others have already described here.