No one likes spam, and there are many features you can take advantage of to prevent spam from appearing on your network:
- Sign-up quiz and CAPTCHA: Adding a quiz to the sign-up process for your social network makes it difficult for spammers to join since they will need to take the time to research the answer. Your quiz could be related to the topic of your network, or could be something as simple as: “What colors are apples?” with possible answers being “red” and “green.” A CAPTCHA requires anyone joining your network to successfully type the words they see in a random computer-generated string.
- Email verification: As a Network Creator, you can enable email verification. When a new member signs up, a verification link will be generated and sent to the email address they supplied. To complete the process, they’ll have to head over to their email account and click on the verification link they receive in an email from the network in order to verify that the email address used is valid.
- Limit Sign up Options: Most spammers create accounts on networks via the native signup option. By disabling this option, you can force members to join using social sign in services such as Facebook, Twitter or LinkedIn. You can disable native sign up from the Sign Up/Sign link under the Members area of your Dashboard.
Email verification and the sign-up quiz are off by default, but we encourage you to take advantage of them as they’re effective and, once set up, don’t require any time from you or your Administrators.
- Member moderation: With member moderation turned on, new members must be approved by you or one of your Administrators before they can sign in or do any sort of activity, such as posting blog posts or photos. You and your Administrators can choose to receive email notifications when new members try to join your social network. If there is anyone pending approval that you’re not comfortable with allowing into your network or if you think they may post spam, you can decline their membership.
- Content moderation: If you notice that members are posting spam with particular features, such as photos, videos, blog posts or events, you can turn on moderation for the feature before content is approved. When turned on, a notification box will appear in a side column to the Network Creator and Administrators, indicating that there is new content awaiting approval.
- Suspending members: If a member posts spam to your social network, you can use the “Suspend for Spam” option. Doing so will remove any content they’ve posted, revoke their membership, block access to the network and prevent them from joining again with the same email address. The “Suspend from Network” option does not automatically remove their content, though you and they will have the option to do so as long as they are suspended from the network. You can additionally keep track of why you suspended a member by adding a note when suspending them.
- Flag content: Flagging content is a discreet way of hiding inappropriate content on your network. If you come across a photo or post that violates Ning’s or your terms of service, you can flag it to hide it from other members on the network. Only you, your Administrators (or moderators you’ve appointed as Content Flaggers) and the original poster will be able to see the content item. This is a great way to handle a one-time offense.
- Spam Watchlist: The Spam Watchlist appears as a link on your Members Moderation page. If there is any content automatically deemed by our spam filters to be spumy, a link to the content, the member who posted it and a snippet of the content will appear on this page.
- Spam Score: The Spam Score (ranging from 0-1) is a part of the Spam Watchlist and indicates the likelihood that a particular member is in fact a spammer. If you see a score of 1 next to a member in the list, we’ll bet they’re a spammer. If you see a lower score, you’ll still want to keep an eye on them, but they may be a legitimate member on your network after all.
- Email domain / IP blocking: These tools, found in the Sign up / Sign in management page in your dashboard, are useful if you’ve found that your network appears to be getting spammed by a particular email domain or IP address. Use these tools to block suspected spammers from a particular email address domain (for example, @sharklasers.com) or from a particular IP address from even being able to sign up.
- Guidelines: Set some guidelines that members can refer to and abide by. If you set these from the start, you will help create a safe environment for all and shows what you consider to be inappropriate on your network.