Spam Control

From KickApps Documentation

A thriving community filled with active members can sometimes attract unwelcome guests.  If your members report Spam/unwanted messages and postings on your site, here's what you and your entire community can do to nip it in the bud:

• Set the community to require email verification before activating member accounts. This change will weed out many fake accounts. That setting is found on the Configure > Manage > Members page of the Affiliate Center. Please note: Email verification can not but turned on for communities using SSO.

• Make sure the "Allow registration and log in using 3rd party provider IDs:" option is unchecked.  That setting is found on the Configure > Settings > Add/Remove Apps page of the Affiliate Center.

• Set your community to private. That way, you must approve all members before they become active on the site. That setting is found on the Configure > Setting page of the Affiliate Center.

• Note: While setting your community to private allows the webmaster to approve or decline each new member before they can access the community (a.k.a. the velvet rope function), it also sets your community pages so they can only be viewed by approved, logged on members of the community.

• Set the Disable Members Automatically flag threshold to a low number. Then encourage your community to flag any members who send/post Spam. That setting is found on the Configure > Manage > Members page of the Affiliate Center.

• If you find a Spammy member in your community, disable their account. Be sure to select the "reject media" option. This will remove any unwanted content that member might have posted. You can disable members on the Configure > Manage > Members page of the Affiliate Center.

• After disabling the member, block their IP address as well. You can do that on the details page of their account. You can see a list of all the IPs you've blocked on the Manage > Members > Member Blacklist section of the Affiliate Center. If you start seeing a pattern in the list of blocked IPs, consider adding an IP range to that list. You can also block a range of IP Addresses by using an asterisk (*) as a "wildcard" (for example 122.163.114.*)

• Disable the RSS Feeds and External Links function on Profile Pages. Spammers tend to post spammy content in these sections and removing them rids you community of that potential. That setting is found on the Configure > Pages > Member Profile Options page of the Affiliate Center.

• Adjust the "Automatic Approvals and Unapprovals" and "Disable Automatically" settings for media, comments, and message boards. You can set it so items must be vetted and approved by your and/or an editor before they can go live on the site.

• You can also set a flagging threshold for items (i.e. if X unique users flag a specific item, the item is pulled from the live site). Those settings are found in the various sections of the Configure > Manage > pages of the Affiliate Center.

• If members complain they're getting email Spam, let them know they can go the Edit Account section of their profile and change their message delivery settings so they only receive messages at their community inbox.

Those simple steps can really make a difference.