Forum Spam

[tharris3382]

I had a forum on one of my sites that got a bunch of spambots and stuff, a lot of the spam was for porn. When I noticed it I just deleted the whole forum and everything altogether because it wasn't really used much to begin with anyway so it wasn't a big deal to just delete it rather than deal with the headache of getting all of that stuff off there.

My question is I still notice some backlinks reported in google and bing webmaster tools to my forum where the spam was at. Will this hurt my search ranking or anything else to do with traffic? and if so how do I go about getting it cleared up and erased where it doesn't show up anymore.

Any help and honest opinions are greatly appreciated.

Thanks

[ScriptMan]

Not really. You can not control who links to you.

If I were you I would either redirect them to my home page or a message saying why there is no forum. You can do that from your control panel.

[tharris3382]

Alright thank you for your response.

[snakeair]

You removed all the bad content so you are fine. Eventually Google will remove those posts/threads from there index. You could try to speed up the process a little though.

Remove a page or site from Google's search results

Do you plan on starting the forum up again? If so, what forum software would you be using?

We can try out best to provide you some tips or plugins...etc to help prevent most of the spam. You can't stop all of it as some human moderation is always needed on forum's.

[C0ldf1re]

Outgoing links to bad sites can hurt you with the search engines.
- BUT -
Incoming links from bad sites will not hurt you.

Why? So sneaky people cannot "poison" their competitors' sites!

If your blog/forum has outgoing links to bad sites, then those links are under your control. If they arrived with spam, then it is up to you to delete them asap!

[Snooks]

I think the amount of spam is in direct relation to what software is in use.

I have a small - med forum on VB and im getting upwards of 100 spams per day....though the auto tools catch most.

I have a large MYBB forum over 100K posts and 10K members and i probably suffer 5 comments per week.

For this reason alone i reckon VB sucks and is a spam magnet.

What software was the forum running?

[C0ldf1re]

Originally Posted by Snooks

I think the amount of spam is in direct relation to what software is in use... I have a small - med forum on VB and im getting upwards of 100 spams per day....though the auto tools catch most... I have a large MYBB forum over 100K posts and 10K members and i probably suffer 5 comments per week... For this reason alone i reckon VB sucks and is a spam magnet... What software was the forum running?

Am I being too simple by saying that most vB forums allow dofollow sig links, whereas MyBB defaults to nofollow?

[ultimatehandyman]

Originally Posted by Snooks

I think the amount of spam is in direct relation to what software is in use.

I have a small - med forum on VB and im getting upwards of 100 spams per day....though the auto tools catch most.

I have a large MYBB forum over 100K posts and 10K members and i probably suffer 5 comments per week.

For this reason alone i reckon VB sucks and is a spam magnet.

What software was the forum running?

I agree.

I used to have a PHPBB and a VB forum, the PHPBB one was not much of a problem but the VB one got spammed big time. The big problem was that I also had adsense running on the VB, which used to be visible on peoples profiles. Some spammers made profiles linking to porn sites and almost got me banned from adsense! Google gave me 2 days notice to remove the offending content or they would of suspended my adsense account (just imagine if I had been on holiday and not received the email)

[Bob Barr]

Has anybody tried contacting the companies whose sites are being pimped in these spam posts?

I'm moderating on a forum for my hosting company. A recent change to the forum setup has spiked the number of bots getting through the registration process. A large number of the links in the spam posts are to the sites of legitimate companies such as car dealerships and other small businesses. In all likelihood, these businesses have purchased somebody's super SEO package and have no idea that their site is being spammed all over the internet. If that were to happen to me, I'd certainly be firing my SEO "expert" in a New York minute and telling every other business owner in town about it.

Any thoughts on this approach? Cutting off the spammers' income and ruining their reputations would seem to be possible, even if it's probably unlikely to happen. (Personally, I'd like to see spamming be elevated to a death-penalty offense, but that's just me.)

[ultimatehandyman]

I haven't as it would be very time consuming.

Many forum spam profiles are created automatically by Xrumer, which can create thousands of profiles in a few clicks

[ScriptMan]

Originally Posted by Bob Barr

Has anybody tried contacting the companies whose sites are being pimped in these spam posts?

Well if you want to work on that I have a database with about 75,000 spam comment posts with IPs you can use as reference material. I intend to give it away as soon as I strip personal info from it.

[C0ldf1re]

Originally Posted by Bob Barr

... Any thoughts on this approach?...

I was never thanked for telling a firm that spam was being used on their behalf. A moderator on another forum tells me that she was abused for doing it.

[Bob Barr]

Originally Posted by ultimatehandyman

I haven't as it would be very time consuming.

Many forum spam profiles are created automatically by Xrumer, which can create thousands of profiles in a few clicks

Multiple spam profiles, though, do have one thing in common: the site that they're pimping. I've seen dozens come through day after day with a link to the Nissan dealer in some particular city or the Ford dealer in another one. These legitimate businesses are paying someone real money for this to be getting done. (While they may see their SERPS improve, they probably don't have the slightest clue as to how it's being done.)

If anyone were spamming the world with my URL, I'd be highly ticked if it were costing me a lot of money for my "professional" SEO expert to make that happen.

[tharris3382]

It was a phpbb forum, I have not used any other types before so I'm unsure of which ones are better or worse at keeping these sort of things from happening.

[Anton Zaleski]

And I'm really interested in one thing - come on, does THAT(spamming) really works? The thing is that I've read an article about a year ago, and there was information that stated spammin' as being effective. Hell!

[snakeair]

It's effective in getting people banned much faster on well moderated forums.

[Snooks]

and there was information that stated spammin' as being effective. Hell!

Given the amount of people that do it, there must be some benefit or they would simply stop. I guess its like buying traffic....its never as good as organic traffic but if you buy enough then eventully you have some success, making it all worthwhile.

[C0ldf1re]

Originally Posted by Snooks

Given the amount of people that do it, there must be some benefit or they would simply stop...

I would guess that it is like the people who send spam to your email. I imagine that for every person who abandons it as not worth the effort, another person starts with high hopes of making money.

[omnireso]

I imagine that for every person who abandons it as not worth the effort, another person starts with high hopes of making money.

I couldn't agree more. See, spammers are people on a niche market as any other. I mean, it costs a lot to spam : one has to buy the softwares, the proxies and the VPN to hide behind and not get banned that fast, and has to set-up all these things to work together.

Many spammers reckon it's not today has it used to be, because it's getting more and more difficult to break the captchas and to "last" long enough to be indexed as, say, a forum profile.

I get tons of spam on my network, an I've set up some honeypots to cath their bots. Then I ban their IP if they are newbies. I don't try anymore to fight spam as there is always a new spammer for one that gives up. It's business. So credule people are always willing to give it a try...

[C0ldf1re]

Originally Posted by omnireso

... I get tons of spam on my network, an I've set up some honeypots to cath their bots...

Please tell us more!