My forum is spammed with Generic Viagra Spam what can i do about this

[MarkoBatelicic]

Hey guys, sorry if this is wrong section or place to ask but maybe someone can help me. My forum just got bombarded with viagra spam, what can you advice me please what tools can i get to stop it?

I was trying to google something about this but with no avail. Sorry to bother but really need some help with this.

[djr33]

First, is this the right section? Do you want to use ASP to block this? If not, what language(s) are you using?

We need a link to your website or some code, or maybe in this case just a description of how it works. We need to know how the spammer is sending you spam, then we can suggest ways to block it.

In general, the only way to stop spam is to limit access to the form or other page from which spam is sent. You can use a CAPTCHA (the "type the following letters" image to block automated requests), you can use user accounts, or you could try something like email address verification (they must receive an email and click on a link for the message to be finally submitted).
You can also attempt to block certain users from the website (by IP address, for example), but that will mean first getting spammed, then blocking them and it won't be very effective overall.
The only alternative method used is to block certain words or phrases (such as "viagra") from being sent at all. This means that you will need to create a list of "bad words" and just not allow anything containing them to be submitted.
However, you just demonstrated in posting this how that can actually work against you: when you made this post, the board automatically blocked it because it contained the word "viagra" because it was spam-- of course this is an exception, so I approved the post, but this means that sometimes legitimate messages may get blocked if they have certain words.

Please give us more information about how the spamming is done and we can suggest more detailed ways to deal with it.

[TattooedScorp]

This is where siganture forms come in handy.

1) Create a 20px x 20px gif file for each letter and/or number in the alphabet
2) Name these files what they are... ie 1.gif, a.gif
3) use ASP to generate a random string of letters or numbers
4) parse each character out in order to call the graphic that is named after it and display it at the bottom of the form
5) Add a form input for your users to enter the random string you have generated
6) add a hidden input that will hold the random string you have genrated...
7) use a Javascript to compare the hidden field with the signature input box before you allow the form to submit... you can also accomplish this with and if loop in your ASP... if hidden_field = signature_field then submit... else, return to the form


This will prevent web crawlers and other unitelligent bots from submitting the form and giving you all the Viagra you ever wnated and more LOL

Hope this helps!

Larry D
MSAE