spammers using 'powered by SMF' to search google to find you

Started by 2babies=tired, August 29, 2011, 02:20:29 PM

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Illori

but the team has stated that for support you must have the copyright in place in the footer of your forum, if we find it missing then we can deny the user support until it is put back in place.

cjones636

What will keep a user from just removing the copyright and replacing it for just long enough for them to get support? They should be something where you can donate certain amount of money to have the to legitimately remove the copyright and after each release, the user donates again to get the copyright removed and still receive support..

Illori

there is nothing to stop them from doing that, and no way for us to stop them from doing it.

Gargoyle

Quote from: Illori on August 29, 2011, 02:23:46 PM
if you use 2.0 you can modify/remove your copyright and loose support from the team. otherwise there is nothing you can do.

With response like this I am surprised more people don't... I mean really ?? Pure Garbage.

To the OP: To answer your question there is not a whole lot. But in 2.0 there is a section in your admin area for meta tags that you can edit. I believe the way to get to it is go to Features and Options then its under General. Like I said it isn't perfect as many search engines don't even use meta tags anymore but it may help a little.

Another thing I have found very useful is the "Stop Forum Spam" modification currently supported by snoopy. That mod is awesome! The mod can help eliminate the issue before it is one. ;D


Aleksi "Lex" Kilpinen

Seriously - The problem is NOT how spammers find you. As long as legit users can find you, spammers can find you as well.
More important than worrying about some search terms ( there are dozens of ways to find an SMF install really ) is to make sure spammers that do find you, can not do anything.

For that, I suggest using verification question and captcha (both built in to 2.0) combined with some of the mods available.
I highly recommend HttpBL myself.
Slava
Ukraini!
"Before you allow people access to your forum, especially in an administrative position, you must be aware that that person can seriously damage your forum. Therefore, you should only allow people that you trust, implicitly, to have such access." -Douglas

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Kindred

And since we were on the topic of copyright for s little bit, let me clarify, please.

SMF 2.0 was released under the BSD (3-Clause) license, which requires that the copyright is maintained in the Source. (i.e. the bit in the php files at the top where we indicate that the file is SMF)
It does not require that the output/displayed copyright be maintained.
This means that, yes, you may remove or alter the copyright statement that is displayed on the bottom of the generated forum pages as long as you are running SMF 2.0.
However, as stated, the SMF team will not provide support for sites with an altered or missing copyright.

Do note that the above statement is true for the 2.0 series....  under the SMF license for 1.0.x and 1.1.x, admins are NOT allowed to alter or remove the copyright. (with the exception of the version number)

(for the comment on changing the "o" to an "o" from another character set... technically this is altering the copyright. With the 2.0 design, you probably won't be called on it. However, if you were running 1.0.x or 1.1.x, that change would, technically, be an issue.)

As for discussions on how to remove the copyright...  while 2.0 ALLOWS it, we (Simple Machines) do not ENCOURAGE it. So, there are no public discussions on how to do so...   mind you, it's not actually all that hidden either.

Finally, for the comments on renaming the functions or files...  doing that won't actually help much at all...   there are too many points of intersection for the bots to search for -- and, unless you really know what you are doing, doing that can lead to major problems with your system, especially with mods.
Слaва
Украинi

Please do not PM, IM or Email me with support questions.  You will get better and faster responses in the support boards.  Thank you.

"Loki is not evil, although he is certainly not a force for good. Loki is... complicated."

Ricky.

Quote from: Kindred on September 02, 2011, 07:48:46 AM
And since we were on the topic of copyright for s little bit, let me clarify, please.

SMF 2.0 was released under the BSD (3-Clause) license, which requires that the copyright is maintained in the Source. (i.e. the bit in the php files at the top where we indicate that the file is SMF)
It does not require that the output/displayed copyright be maintained.
This means that, yes, you may remove or alter the copyright statement that is displayed on the bottom of the generated forum pages as long as you are running SMF 2.0.
However, as stated, the SMF team will not provide support for sites with an altered or missing copyright.

Do note that the above statement is true for the 2.0 series....  under the SMF license for 1.0.x and 1.1.x, admins are NOT allowed to alter or remove the copyright. (with the exception of the version number)

(for the comment on changing the "o" to an "o" from another character set... technically this is altering the copyright. With the 2.0 design, you probably won't be called on it. However, if you were running 1.0.x or 1.1.x, that change would, technically, be an issue.)

As for discussions on how to remove the copyright...  while 2.0 ALLOWS it, we (Simple Machines) do not ENCOURAGE it. So, there are no public discussions on how to do so...   mind you, it's not actually all that hidden either.

Finally, for the comments on renaming the functions or files...  doing that won't actually help much at all...   there are too many points of intersection for the bots to search for -- and, unless you really know what you are doing, doing that can lead to major problems with your system, especially with mods.


Yap.. that is what BSD license say :P..

However, I had once tried playing with changing words in PHPBB (when I was new to forum world) , kinda helped a lot when I changed PHPBB powered by stuff at bottom , it helps but not too much. Now, I don't care for anything, I have my custom stuff and practices and by which I generally stops 99% bots / spam in WP, VB or SMF too :P , just to add here, SMF now already have MODS for those which I used to do manually so.. SMF is good for fighting spam !

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