Option to disallow links in user profiles?

Gliding9426

I had five instances of different ~~users~~ assholes in my forum coming, registering, making a few posts to look authentic, then disappearing for a few months, and then finally coming back and putting SEO spam in their profile. The extremely extensive viagra pill irritating SEO spam. Now, I already noticed that it's as "nofollow" but those are that kind of idiots are thinking "google is considering SEO spam with nofollow links as valid".

Because they're humans, they approve the confirmation link in the email, they post something that makes sense, and they wait a moment because posting the SEO spam in their profile - a moderator can't see easily what they're doing.

I already IP banned that entire country (for my instance, users from that country are 100% spam and 0% legit), but maybe could be a good idea to have an option in the settings to disallow links altogether.

What do you think?

julian

Makes sense. Where are they putting the links, in website? or in the "about me"?

<baris>

You can also increase the reputation required to add website/about me/signature fields at /admin/settings/reputation

cat

Those kind of users are always the most annoying, considering that they are real users albeit, sneaky one. Had problem fighting those in my Wordpress site that has wpforo forum plugins in it.

For my NodeBB, I settled with:

Disable links in signatures
Disable images in signatures
Reputation requirement for writing About Me and Website on profile

And, Warning Page on Outgoing Links as last resort.

phenomlab

@cat I do something similar. I have a pretty high bar before anyone can do that (reputation 50).

Gliding9426

Yes, they were writing in the about me. Pretty invisible to moderators, was discovered by accident because one of those was posting useless replies and was wondering "who's with this user?"

I enabled reputation to post that, i did not notice, thank you all for the hints

crazycells

reputation requirement does not work for us since restricting 1 asshole affects 1000 regular users... We use signature/about me sections very actively, so people usually fill that information right after registering...

I think my "profile info scanner plugin" idea can solve all these issues

https://community.nodebb.org/topic/16828/profile-info-scanner-plugin