Spamming Security - Resolutions

Question

Recently, somebody from Texas and Atlanta IPs have been posting spam comments on articles. To deal with this, we are doing this.
Removed HTML support from comments. I know it will be difficult to post code or images in comments but this is why we have Article Extensions . I have not seen much use of HTML formatting on comments anyway.
We have a feature where Admin or Editor can InActive a user. Once a user is InActive, he cannot login back again in the system. Right now, this feature is not effective because user is not kicked off until session is still active. So we are implementing so once a user is InActive, we will clear his/her session and he/she will be forced to login again and user willl not be able to login back.
Third option - If they still don't stop. We can implement Gopcha.
Cheers!

Mahesh Chand · Answer

Problem with approval process is, comments needs to be real-time. Some authors have lot of articles. For example, I have over 1000 articles and number may go to 2000. So if I get 200 comments everyday, I will spend my all day just reading and approving them ;). This is not realistic.
Other problem is, some users may post negative comment and author may not approve them.

Nitin Sontakke · Answer

Everyday I click "mark as spam" for at least 4-5 forum questions. I was even thinking (jokingly of course!) that may be we should start getting points for this too!   Anyway. On a more serious note, may be I don't understand this quite clearly, so please take time to enlighten me. How does spammers post questions, without logging in. If they do login, they must register. Now I have forgotten the registration process. Is registration process such that an automated program can do registration?    I am just curious to know / understand the best place to stop this without putting legitimate posters at inconvenience.

Suthish Nair · Answer

Best keep an Comments approval logic by article owner or admins.

Sam Hobbs · Answer

Are you sure you mean Gopcha? You probably mean Captcha. That will certainly make things more inconvenient for non-spammers but if it is a spammer that uses spammer tools, then a Captcha will likely not slow them down.
Does the spam posts have links in them? If so, then you could prevent the posts based on that content; check the content for the domain name or something such as that. It might not stop them entirely but hopefully it will make things more difficult.
There are many web sites having problems with spam. Many of them won't allow unmoderated posts from new members. The tivocommunity web site has so much problems with spam that they were extremely unreasonable about what they did to me even though I was not spamming and would not. Moderating new members can however be productive I think.

Nanddeep Nachan · Answer

Simply add "I am not a Robot" checkbox

Nigel Fernandes · Answer

You can implement Google reCaptcha.   :)   http://www.c-sharpcorner.com/article/implement-google-recaptcha-in-asp-net-mvc/

Mahesh Chand · Answer

We had this spammer coming everyday all day and he has stopped after we removed the HTML editor. So far so good.

Suthish Nair · Answer

oops :)
need to set some good spamming security for that. hope someone will came up with an good idea.

Mahesh Chand · Answer

Yes I meant Captcha :). I do not like it thoug. It is annoying and if I see it anywhere I tried not to post comments. We can definitely ad bad words feature to the editor too but this is again, one of those issues that has its pros and cons. I don't see too many people using HTML editor in comments though.