Spammers and an idea

[bigjoe11a]

For a long time now a lot of us have to put up with users just registering just so they can spam our boards. Well I have an idea about that.

The idea is to update ALL boards and not just the one your running. My idea is that when a user spams a board and the admin banes him/her. Then the IP address should be updated for all the boards. Who ever is running a SMF board. It updates a mysql database and then all boards get updated. This keeps spammers out for good.

When a user connects to the board or loads in the index.php page. It should check to see if that user is using an IP address that's been banned. If so that user will not be able to see any of the pages or be able to register, How ever that should be up to the admin, what they can and can not see. This gets updated all over the place (world).

Any admin running SMF should  have this option turned on and it should be on as default. if it matches IP address with a database and a text file. The

The text file holds all the IP address from the main board. //This file
The database is what is read when a user loads the index page.  //Updates this database.

[Antechinus]

I like it. Really, I do. Would totally serve the bastards right. However, it would also be reinventing the wheel as there are services which already offer this sort of functionality. Project Honeypot and Stop Forum Spam are two good ones. There are mods available which allow you to hook those up to your forum.

* Antechinus has been meaning to do Honeypot on his site but keeps forgetting........................

[bigjoe11a]

Thanks. I didn't know and can you tell me if these services cost money and if not. what would be the best mod to install.

[青山 素子]

Both services are no-cost. Using the data from Project Honeypot (via the SMF httpBL modification) only requires that you set up a honeypot to feed their service data. Using Stop Forum Spam data via the Stop Spammer modification) is also no cost with no restrictions.

Personally, I feel the data from Project Honeypot is much more reliable due to their data submission methods and removal policies. All the data from Stop Forum Spam is user-submitted and not reviewed, so there are likely very old invalid records and false positives in there.

[bigjoe11a]

Ok, cool. can you tell me where this mod is. I didn't see that mod on SMF, so do you know where I can download it at.

[Antechinus]

http://custom.simplemachines.org/mods/index.php?mod=2155

[Clara Listensprechen]

...and then there's this matter of that checkbox one checks when doing a fresh install of SMF, which allows SMF to gather data. SMF might not be gathering THAT sort of data from any given SMF board who opted into that, but it might to well to start.

[Antechinus]

Why? Reinventing the wheel.

[Clara Listensprechen]

Because it's there.

[Illori]

I know i dont want my ban list populated with a random list of bans without my approval, if the software did this I would have to find a way to convert everything mods included to another software so i have control over my bans.

[Clara Listensprechen]

That sounds awful drastic over a control issue...considering that there are people using SMF who don't have a problem with that. Wow.

[Illori]

also you have no idea why people put bans on their forum, copying them to every install everywhere could cause 1 person that got in a fight with an admin to be banned on lets take a guess maybe 10k+ forums... no that would not be the right thing to do either.

[butchs]

Banning ip addresses that are not country specific are a waste of time.  Bots and bad people change their ip addresses daily and sometime hourly.  It is much better going external with mod httpBL or bad behavior et al than cluttering up your site with countless ip bans.  Even if used in htaccess they will eventually slow down your site...  The new free services are sooooo much better.

[bigjoe11a]

That's why the list would have to be updated all the time. The idea is to give them an idea that we don't want them in our forums sections. I hate it that all most every time some one joins my board that all they do is spam. It's crazy...

[Clara Listensprechen]

When you ban spoofed IPs, you wind up banning real people. Members, even. Banning IPs is pretty much useless anymore. And a good reason not to do that on political forums is that people who are in repressive countries use IP masks anyway, and what a legit political activist can do, a spammer can do using the same software.

[Clara Listensprechen]

also you have no idea why people put bans on their forum, copying them to every install everywhere could cause 1 person that got in a fight with an admin to be banned on lets take a guess maybe 10k+ forums... no that would not be the right thing to do either.

Ya, that makes sense. Scratch what I said.