I’m a little web savvy and have actually been thinking of some ways that might help lesson the spam.
1. Block ip addresses of spam accounts
This could be done in a couple of ways. When users create their account, be sure to grab their IP when they do. That can easily be done with some php. Then once their account has been identified as malicious, you could add that IP to some kind of blacklist. So, when accounts are created you check them against that blacklist. If a match is found, put some kind of lock on that account until further notice.
To reinforce that method, you could place a cookie on their computer to check for blacklisting too. Maybe when they try to access the site, have the site check their browser for a “banishment cookie”, and if they have it, don’t allow them access to the site. This reinforces the previous method be insuring even if they spoof their IP, you still have some kind of way to check their ban status.
2. String recognition
This is a little more difficult to implement I think. Basically once a spam post is found, grab all the text from it and store it in some kind of “spam list”. Whenever users try to post anything new, use string recognition or maybe some regular expressions to check the contents of their post against the spam list. If enough words match up, automatically make that post hidden from the get go until further notice.
The difficult thing about this is its not just enough to use string recognition. You would need some kind of pattern recognition as well. Just matching strings would be too “broad” I guess because users use a lot of the same strings. You could also check the links in a post too, just in case the strings are different but hyperlinks are the same.
3. Frequency of post
If someone makes 5 post in under a minute, 8 times out of 10, probably a spammer. In which lock the account from making anymore post until further notice so it stops them from spreading more spam.
I would also recommend this book and this book. Kind of dated, but still has good enough in them. If your a pirate, unfortunately I am, you can get those books from here and here.
If any of these ideas are in consideration for use, I’d recommend deleting this post so exploits can’t be thought of.
