Combating bbPress Spam

[chipbennett]

In response to Ryan's and Jeff's chatbox comments regarding a lack of spam-related plugins for bbPress, I thought I'd do a quick run-down of the anti-spam related plugins available for bbPress.

(There are others available in the plugin repository, but the following list comprises the plugins that I use.)

1. Akismet
   
   Installed by default: Yes
   
   Akismet works in bbPress much the same way as it works in WordPress (as far as I can tell). It will flag posts as spam, and will flag spammers as "Bozo" users (see Bozo Users plugin, below).
   
   I'm not exactly sure how Akismet is integrated into bbPress. It is listed in the Active Plugins list, but is not listed in the bbPress plugin repository, and I can't find a ready link to a bbPress plugin download, even on the Akismet web site.
   
2. Bozo Users
   
   Installed by default: Yes
   
   The Bozo Users plugins allows for users to be flagged as a "Bozo", either by moderators, or by Akismet. Users flagged as a "Bozo" can still post, but their posts are visible only to themselves.
   
3. bb-NoSpamUser
   
   Installed by default: No
   
   The bb-NoSpamUser plugin blocks potential spammers from registering on your forum. It compares the username and the email-address with the ones in the database at http://www.stopforumspam.com/ If it gets a positive result, it immediately prevents the potential spammer from registering on your forum.
   
   Note that this plugin also prevents a potential spammer from logging in, even if registered. (And a caveat: you will not be able to log in as user "Admin" once this plugin is installed. This behavior may be desirable or undesirable, depending on your circumstances. On one hand, it will prevent successful hacks of a known username; on the other hand, it's awfully inconvenient if you happen to use "Admin". I had to hack the plugin to make an exception for the "Admin" username, since it is what I use for local development.)
   
4. Enhanced Registration
   
   Installed by default: No
   
   The Enhanced Registration plugin will automatically delete users who successfully register, but do not then login within a specified time limit (e.g. 24 hours, 48 hours, etc.). This behavior (register, no login) is more indicative of spammers/bots than normal users, apparently.
   
5. Human Test for bbPress
   
   Installed by default: No
   
   The Human Test for bbPress plugin adds a new field at the bottom of your registration page with two random numbers to add together. Uses a few tricks like javascript and entity encoding to slow down the smarter bots. (Almost identical to the Math Comment Spam Protection plugin for WordPress.)
   
   Also supports bb-anonymous-posting plugin with a challenge question automatically placed above posts/topics. (Though if one is worried about spam, allowing anonymous posting is probably a bad idea to begin with.)
   
6. Skip Akismet
   
   Installed by default: No
   
   The Skip Akismet plugin defines a list of roles (ie. administrator, moderator) that should never be checked against the Akismet spam filter to prevent false positives. You can also use the profile checkbox for ignoring "throttle limit" to specifiy skipping for individual users.
   
   This is a helper plugin, to prevent false positives.
   
7. Mass Delete Users
   
   Installed by default: No
   
   The Mass Delete Users plugin allows administrators to find and delete many users in bulk at once. Users are physically deleted from the bbPress / WordPress database based on a variety of attributes.
   
   This plugin isn't really an anti-spam plugin, but is incredibly helpful if you get inundated with spam registrations before implementing any of the above plugins.

As I mentioned above, there are other anti-spam related plugins for bbPress. However, the above list seems to be working well for me.

[Ryan]

Thanks for the run down chipbennett :)

I assume part of the reason Akismet is not in the bbPress plugin repository is because it has always been available by default anyway. Akismet was available as a separate plugin download for WordPress before it was available within the core software so I'd guess they just don't bother removing it as a separate download for that reason. I could be wrong though.

There is also a new plugin called Clickcha which seems to be quite good. But oddly there doesn't seem to be a generic CAPTCHA style plugin, I'd have thought that would be the prime way to combat spam. They may be crackable, but so are many other anti-spam techniques and CAPTCHA seems to be by far the most common approach to tackling the problem. CAPTCHA has issues associated with it, but so do all of these other ones.

[williamsba]

Excellent post Chip! Going to run through these on a new bbPress forum we migrated from phpBB.

[chipbennett]

Excellent post Chip! Going to run through these on a new bbPress forum we migrated from phpBB.

Glad to help!

I've made some changes to my anti-spam measures in bbPress, so I'll take a look at what I'm currently doing, and see if this list needs to be modified.