We are hit by a massive spam wave for days now. Others like https://ask.learncbse.in/ gave up for the moment as it seems :thinking: I’m searching here just for one variant: [image] The content changes often, the email addresses and IPs as well so blocking does reduce the amount but we didn’t find a real fix yet. For privacy reasons we do not want to send everything to Akisment. If we would block AS55836: Reliance Jio Infocomm Limited AS9498: Bharti Airtel Ltd. AS45609: Bharti Airtel Ltd. AS24560: Bharti Airtel Ltd. we would be fine, but this could be a good (or small) part of the Indian population.

Have you tried adding certain words to Admin → Customize → Watched Words → Require Approval? From your screenshot, I’d try adding these words: cash credit money loan toll-free customer care care number 0779* helpline :point_left: It can be slightly inconvenient for users, but I have Discourse send a webhook to a Firebase cloud function (free) that pings my phone in a Slack chat room, so I can often approve posts in moderation within 60 seconds from my phone, if I’m awake.

Thanks for the hint but please check out https://ask.learncbse.in/ (it’s not my instance but the posts are more or less the same I’m fighting against) and scroll through the last days, they are using a ton of combinations and variations of each keyword. I’m in the process of creating a lot of regex for each keyword because they are adding everywhere a “.”, a “,” a “|”, replacing a “0” with an “O”, an “e” with a “3”, adding in the middle of the word a (up to now) random character etc etc … it is really difficult to fight against this type of spam. Or if you do not want to click on a random link, here is a screenshot of the last few hours, but these are just the last few hours, they vary a lot over time: [image]

Just to check, but do you use the min first post typing time admin setting? I find that quite useful for catching a lot of ours.

Yes, thanks for the hint, this is set but I mean it is not that hard for the bot to just wait a few minutes :slight_smile:

This spam seems like a different type to the AI based answers/content the other topic is focused on so I’ve split it out. :+1: We do have a new AI-based tool for spam detecting which has proven to be quite effective: [imagen] Setting up spam detection in your community Site Management bookmark This is a #how-to guide for setting up spam detection in your community using the Discourse AI - AI triage. person_raising_hand Required user level: Administrator warning Discourse AI now ships an efficient spam scanner that requires minimal setup. For custom or complex use cases, we recommend following this guide Overview Spam detection is an essential feature for maintaining the quality of discussions in your community. This guide will help you set up spam detection using…

Thanks for the tip, but setting up an LLM just to fight another spammer LLM for our discourse is way too expensive for our usecase. As a spammer you can easily increase the cost for the org by just creating more users/posts, so depending on what you want to archive this could be also a motivation to create even more posts :slight_smile:

Hi, Have you tried using Akismet? Seems like their solution would work for you. (free for personal use, not for commercial use - don’t know how you’d categorise yourself)

Perhaps requiring every user’s first post to be approved would help a bit here? That way at least they’d never make it onto the forum publicly, and as long as you don’t have a lot of real users signing up daily, I think it would help at least some.

Thanks for all the tips. [imagen] Mol: Have you tried using Akismet? Seems like their solution would work for you. We do thought about it but we have a privacy and security product which means we do need to protect our users as much as possible. The content is public for sure but not the IP Address/Agent/Referrer/Email if I understood Discourse Akismet correctly, it is transmitted to Akismet (sure would also read the privacy policy but the overview is already enough information for the decision). [imagen] Firepup Sixfifty: Perhaps requiring every user’s first post to be approved would help a bit here? That would be an idea. With ~2 signups per day it shouldn’t be too much trouble, but it’s not the best experience to wait for an approval, but if we explain it properly it might be the best option we have for now.

Yes, you are unfortunately correct - they do transmit some additional data to Akismet which may not align with your privacy policy. In that case, @Firepup650’s suggestion is the best one out there.

Bloqueando la ola reciente de spam

Soporte del producto

juanjosegzl (Juan José González) 13 Julio, 2025 18:09 17

Hola a todos

Tengo una prueba de concepto de esto, si quieren echarle un vistazo

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Diagnosing spam attack of 100 topics Feature	34	3548	29 Mayo 2017
Tips for Preventing Spam Site Management moderation , explanation , spam	14	6016	1 Diciembre 2025
Spam Posts Product Support	2	624	10 Abril 2024
Watched words to block recent spam attack Sysadmins watched-words , spam	12	631	10 Septiembre 2025

Bloqueando la ola reciente de spam

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