Spammers

My would-be social network on fairness, SimplyFair.net, is being overrun by spammers with no purpose there but harassment.  I keep deleting them but they keep coming. Are others of you plagued in this manner? What to do but keep deleting?

  • You should use the Spam Login Filter plugin (https://elgg.org/plugins/774755) in any case. This plugin checks against the StopForumSpam database during account creation if the entered data is suspicious. With the plugin in use you should also register an account at the StopForumSpam.com site to get an API key. With such an API key entered in the Spam Login Filter plugin settings you can report users to them (instead of just deleting an account you get an additional report+delete option). Reporting spammers helps to reduce the number of spammers registering in the future not only for you but also for other sites. The Spam Login Filter plugin is the most important plugin to reduce the number of spammers already before they could create an account and you might need no other but this one. I have created a similar other plugin (https://elgg.org/plugins/1641554) that works in the same way but is much less effective (their database focus is less on the typical spammers of social network sites as it seems and you can't send reports to them either).

    Then there are plugin to help with spammers after they managed to create an account: Spam Throttle (https://elgg.org/plugins/821368) and Trusted User Spam Reports (https://elgg.org/plugins/1508071, requires also https://elgg.org/plugins/1508060). But I hadn't needed these so far as Spam Login Filter already helped sufficiently.

  • Thank you for this very generous and likely helpful response. I'll pursue your suggestions.

    Doug Bedell