Forum search

[two-questions-only]

For guests browsing is allowed but not searching. Why?

[MortenMacFly]

What is the motivation to forbid guests to search but not read this forum?

Avoid SPAM.

[two-questions-only]

Both search and read are read operations and if you do not define spam as any "bad" traffic requesting data from the server (I know that there exists bot attacks which may sink any web site) neither browsing or searching implies spam so I still do not understand that policy.

[MortenMacFly]

I still do not understand that policy.

We have seen SPAM "posting" parts of other forum posts to avoid being filtered as the message seems authentic in that case. I don't know how spam bots do so, but after restricting access for guests a lot this seems to have disappeared.

I've re-enabled searching for guests now. However, if these effects come back I'll disable it again.

[Jenna]

I can't imagine how it can be related, or whether it is related, but since the forums search is reenabled for guests (the last two days), the amount of new registered (known) spammers increased significantly to 25 to 40 per day.
Luckily they are recognized by our anti-spam system and never approved, so they can not post.

To see if it is really related or not, I disable Forum search for guests again (hopefully temporary).

[MortenMacFly]

I can't imagine how it can be related, or whether it is related, but since the forums search is reenabled for guests (the last two days), the amount of new registered (known) spammers increased significantly to 25 to 40 per day.

I can't, too but you can add another few SPAM bots I've had deleted silently during the last couple of days.

[Jenna]

Nothing has really changed  :cry:
Still tons of new spam-accounts every day, but also no new spam-posts.

I reenabled the forum search for guests.
If we do not get a large amount of spam posts from now on, it will most likely stay enabled.

[MortenMacFly]

Nothing has really changed  :cry:

This really sucks. The only chance I see is SMF v2.0 which will have a way better SPAM protection. still: For the SMF version we are using the anti-spam plugins are very rare and the once we have do something but are far from being a good solution... :-(