For the last five weeks, Northern StartUp 2.0 website has been under attack by spammers. The spamming was related to opening accounts, about 5 every hour, which has resulted in over 1000 new accounts. Less than 1% of these accounts have actually added any comments, but if they all did, the site will be overwhelmed by spammed comments.
Here are some facts about the site:
- Drupal 5.3
- Accounts are needed to comment
Based on various suggestions via Twitter and from Ixis IT (previous website development team) and CTISN (current website development team), following changes were made:
- Captcha
- Recaptcha
- Mollow
- Akismet
- Must complete all 12 fields to register with tricky new feild to catch the spammers
- Admin must approve account creation – all new accounts are blocked but this activity creates additional emails for me to address
None of the above had any impact on spam account creation! All of us are running out of ideas and wonder whether you have any further thoughts on this issue. All help is most welcome.
Don’t forget, the issue is not to identify which is spam and which is real, but to stop this happening altogether.
Update 1:
With an immediate effect, account creation has been suspended. If you wish an account, please get in touch with your phone no. and email address.
Please accept our apologies for any inconvenience
Best regards
Manoj