Hi there -
I wanted to post this on the "Hints and Tips" board, but I don't appear to have permission to start a new thread there.
So I'll post it here, so that the vBulletin staff can decide as to whether it is suitable or not...
Anyway - the sad fact is that a lot of forums are being spammed without the forum administrators even being aware that problem exists.
I call it Silent Spamming and wrote a specific article on it here, detailing what is going on, and giving three principle examples of where it is occurring:
The most relevant part is where I refer to the Silent Spamming of forums:
This is a very real problem - and, not only that, seems particularly an issue with indexed vBulletin's (note that phpbb's use a drop down box to sort memberlists out alphabetically).
Anyway, once you've referenced the articles above - notably the second link - then please check out a live example of Silent Spamming on Forum Forum (once a vBulletin of the Month last year):
http://www.forum-forum.com/forum/memberlist.php?s
Almost every member on that first page of the Memberlist page is a Silent Spammer, manipulating the vBulletin memberlist to promote porn sites - all without Admin knowledge. And, yes - I have just sent Mal a warning e-mail now that I've found it on his board.
Anyway, if anyone wants to block Silent Spammers from abusing the Memberlist, either turn it off manually in the settings (at least in vBulletin 3) - or else implemented a robots.txt file, such as this very simple example:
I sincerely hope that helps some people.
What's really sad is that all this Silent Spamming of the Memberlist is done supposedly for Search Engine Optimisation purposes - yet is extremely inefficient and ultimately serves little advantage in SEO terms.
I wanted to post this on the "Hints and Tips" board, but I don't appear to have permission to start a new thread there.
So I'll post it here, so that the vBulletin staff can decide as to whether it is suitable or not...
Anyway - the sad fact is that a lot of forums are being spammed without the forum administrators even being aware that problem exists.
I call it Silent Spamming and wrote a specific article on it here, detailing what is going on, and giving three principle examples of where it is occurring:
The most relevant part is where I refer to the Silent Spamming of forums:
This is a very real problem - and, not only that, seems particularly an issue with indexed vBulletin's (note that phpbb's use a drop down box to sort memberlists out alphabetically).
Anyway, once you've referenced the articles above - notably the second link - then please check out a live example of Silent Spamming on Forum Forum (once a vBulletin of the Month last year):
http://www.forum-forum.com/forum/memberlist.php?s
Almost every member on that first page of the Memberlist page is a Silent Spammer, manipulating the vBulletin memberlist to promote porn sites - all without Admin knowledge. And, yes - I have just sent Mal a warning e-mail now that I've found it on his board.
Anyway, if anyone wants to block Silent Spammers from abusing the Memberlist, either turn it off manually in the settings (at least in vBulletin 3) - or else implemented a robots.txt file, such as this very simple example:
Code:
User-agent: * Disallow: /forum/memberlist.php
What's really sad is that all this Silent Spamming of the Memberlist is done supposedly for Search Engine Optimisation purposes - yet is extremely inefficient and ultimately serves little advantage in SEO terms.
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