Stop Spammer

[BigMike]

Question, instead of putting them (spam users) in a pending list to which you need to "tick" and then reject. Is it possible to just have them rejected

The SFS mod for Drupal has an option to check for a minimum number of previously reported entries in the Spam Database. If the user has been reported more than this amount to SFS, then the registration is blocked entirely and the user is reported to your API key/account.

The Drupal mod explains it this way, and includes the following default values:

A user account or an attempted user registration will be deemed a spammer if the email, username, or IP address has been reported to www.stopforumspam.com more times than the following thresholds.
Number of times the email has been reported is equal to or more than: 1
Number of times the username has been reported is equal to or more than: Don't use username as a criteria
Number of times the IP address has been reported is equal to or more than: 20

If the user passes these tests, and deemed a spammer, then after submitting her registration information is presented with a configurable message. The default message is, "Your email address or username is blacklisted."

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Only Problem: Removing members now takes forever, and I really mean forever. I don't know how the request doesn't time out in my browser. My server load goes up from 0.2 to about 1.5 for a solid ten mins before Firefox reloads the page with the member account removed. The process that goes sky high is mysql.

Regarding my issue with really slow member deletion, I was thinking that since I just installed this mod, maybe I don't have something else configured to work with it? For example, I require Email Activation and do not Require Approval. My option for "Method of registration employed for new members" is and has always been set to "Email Activation". I am not using the "Admin Approval" however within the hour that I've been running this mod I now have something I've never seen in my life, "There is one member awaiting approval." ! And when I go here there is 1 member in red, a known spammer.

I can't see the activation method having anything to do with member deletion however... But I'm to the point where I'm scratching my head now.

Thanks
Mike

[BigMike]

I installed on a forum with 16,000 members and I kid you not only 700 of them are not spam. I ended up just removing anyone who hadnt logged in in a month who had no posts just so I could go through the list checking everyone

...  check the members one at a time every day daily maintenance is done if they havent been checked? That would just be a variable in the DB for like Is_Spammer_Checked and then it can gather 20 that arent on maint and send them? Would that be easier?

The mod for Drupal also has this functionality. What it does is every time cron runs, which for active sites can be every hour, there is a configurable quantity of members that are checked starting at a configurable member number.

The mod explains this as follows,

Scan existing accounts
This module can also check existing user accounts to see if they are known spammers. It works by checking user accounts with increasing uid's ie. user id 2, 3, 4 etc during cron. Any existing users found to be known spammers are logged. Blocked user accounts are not checked.
Maximum number of user accounts to check per cron:
Action to take: None, just log it OR Block user account OR Delete user account
Continue scanning after this user id: 1

The max # of account to scan per cron was blank by default, and I am currently doing 40 accounts every 3 hours. There is a warning message to not scan too many accounts because if your site queries SFS too often then you won't be able to use the service until the end of the day. The "continue scanning after this user id" option is also a text field which is a nice option. In case I want to start scanning from the user account 20000, I can just enter this so as to not scan old accounts.

It also provides scanning stats, which for my Drupal site currently looks like this (I just installed this mod yesterday):

Scan status
Accounts checked: 270, Accounts remaining: 23262
The last checked user account is: kakudu69 (uid 272)

Regards,
BigMike

[MoreBloodWine]

You talking about this or is it just too late and I'm being dumb ? I don't even pretend to know what drupal is lol.

http://custom.simplemachines.org/mods/index.php?mod=1519

Mind you that was last updated in 2011 but I guess is still functional for the few comments on the last page I read. Either way I'd like something that does what I ask and this mod carries the name of what your talking about.

That said, would the SFS mod or whatever be used in conjunction with this mod or as a replacement ? If in conjunction I kinda see some compatability issues coming up given how this mod handles "members" and how I'd like them handled which you said SFS does.

[BigMike]

Drupal is an open sourced content management system, https://drupal.org/. To get an idea of what can be done with Drupal, see https://drupal.org/case-studies. All of those sites are built from scratch right on top of Drupal.

http://custom.simplemachines.org/mods/index.php?mod=1519

Mind you that was last updated in 2011 but I guess is still functional for the few comments on the last page I read. Either way I'd like something that does what I ask and this mod carries the name of what your talking about.

Ohhhhh. This is very nice. Why do we have two of these mods for SMF?

Just parsed it. It's only a registration blocker .....which is exactly what is needed. It doesn't post the spammers back to the DB so it doesn't proactively aid in the reduction of spam.

It is nice to have the interactive features of Stop Spammer. You're right, these two should be combined.

[MoreBloodWine]

Thxx for that but I guess what I shoulda asked is if you know of a mod that does everything you talked about for SMF. If anything, I might jut use the outdated mod since that i effectively what I gues I'm after, a registratin blocker for spam bots.

[BigMike]

No sorry I do not. The mod I quoted is for a different software.

I am still trouble shooting my user delete issue, but I gotta get to sleep for work tomorrow. I just deleted one user and tracked the time. From the Awaiting Approval screen, I check marked one red spammer and selected 'Reject' from the SMF drop down at 11:03:45 PM. The page finally reloaded with the user gone at 11:15:44 PM. Twelve minutes to delete one member. I'll look into this some more tomorrow after work

G'Night from the west coast,
BigMike

[BigMike]

Well, I couldn't sleep because I was thinking about this, and I just removed the mod and went to delete a (spammer) user and low-and-behold it is taking f-o-r-e-v-e-r!!

CRAP, something is wrong with my SMF, NOT this mod. Sorry for the false alarm

BigMike

[teos55]

Have you checked the "server" error log through cpanel or whatever tool you have ?  Repair DB and settings might help ...

[BigMike]

Good tips.
I downloaded a general server log from cPanel and its just a bunch of GET commands and what looks like normal things.
I ran repair_settings.php and there actually was one problem, "Queryless URLs" had no value for some reason so I set it to the recommended "Off".

I think I need to look at queries maybe but I'm not sure where phpMyAdmin stores logs yet. In case anyone else is experiencing this, I have begun replying to the following thread: http://www.simplemachines.org/community/index.php?topic=479645

Thanks
Mike

Edit: Haha after running repair_settings.php half the text and images on my forum are missing Gotta figure out whats up lol

Edit 2: Figured it out. repair_settings reset my forum's theme to the default theme, when in fact we are using a different theme that looks nearly identical. Gonna delete a known spammer member and see if setting 'Queryless URLs' to 'Off' fixed the issue or not

Edit 3: Nope, didn't fix it. I think its good to have the value set so I thank you again. Cheers!

[Jade Elizabeth]

Hello SMF,

First HUGE thanks to M-DVD, snoopy_virtual, and any others that have put in time to develop this mod. I just discovered StopForumSpam yesterday and am having great results with it on my Drupal CMS site.

I am running SMF v2.0.3 and just installed this mod manually and everything seems to be working fine.

Only Problem: Removing members now takes forever, and I really mean forever. I don't know how the request doesn't time out in my browser. My server load goes up from 0.2 to about 1.5 for a solid ten mins before Firefox reloads the page with the member account removed. The process that goes sky high is mysql.

I am using my API key configured correctly and I get the green text for both "Your host can make remote connection with the DB" and "...the connection with Stop Forum Spam is perfect".

I Disabled this mod and then tried to delete another account (I checked manually and verified spam) and SMF also took ten something minutes to complete the request.

Question: I can't possibly read all 84 pages here, I tried searching, Has anyone else experienced this, and if so, what is the fix?

I checked my error log and its empty. All the functionality as described in the mod seems to be working as expected.

If I'm the only one to report this, does anyone know how to trouble shoot mysql, maybe where its error log is on my CentOS/Apache/cPanel server, or how to inspect what queries are holding it up?

MANY Thanks for the help. This MOD is long overdue on our large forum (almost 1 million posts)

Regards,
BigMike

EDIT: Sorry, discovered I have some issue with my SMF, unrelated to this mod.

Just search the topic silly, up the top right when in topics the search box changes to "in this topic" .

[BigMike]

Just search the topic silly, up the top right when in topics the search box changes to "in this topic" .

I did do this as well as the forum as a whole. Didn't find anything, and for good reason as my issue ended up not being related (I chose not to delete my original post since I'm referencing it in other posts as well as other topics and as well as other forums!)


Edit: Side note: I figured my issue out and posted a crude fix at the mod author's site here. It looks to be a bug with SMF Likes Pro when a member is removed that has never performed any likes.

Related to Stop Spammer, I never knew about this bug until I tried removing Spammers that were in the Awaiting Admin Approval category. From my uneducated research it looks like SMF Likes Pro is not programmed correctly to handle this!

[BigMike]

Features:

...

• When registering a user, will compare their data (nickname, IP and mail) with the DB "Stop Forum Spam". If match any data, then the user is inactive 'Waiting for Approval'.

...

• It keeps a record number of all Spammers Blocked to date

Hey guys,

Now that I got everything working well and am reporting and rejecting registrations, I am wondering if this mod blocks the re-registrations of those previously reported and rejected?

Otherwise, I'll just be going around in circles reporting & rejecting the same spammers.

I checked my Ban list and there are no new bans being created.

I know there is another mod that will prevent spammers from registering, but then I loose the ability to report them to SFS. I am just wondering if this mod adds any protection from those who administrators have spent the time reporting and rejecting?

Thanks!
BigMike

[Kindred]

This does not add any bans, as far as I know...   it just checks against the SFS database.
The benefit of reporting is that you contribute to the SFS database...  it has no prevention for the same spammer trying to register on your site multiple times...

I will say that, with the standard Q&A (part of SMF 2.0.x) and the bad behavior + HTTPBL mod, this mod only triggers about once a month for me these days...

[DarkAngel612]

I have this one and the HttpBL mod and between them both I have no re-registering of the "naughty" folks. I can ban them, make sure at least 3 triggers are showing clicked then delete their account totally so they do not muck up my member listing too.

The only problem is that occasionally I have to manually add a wannabe member cause they are not spammers but the info was close enough...lol

I also have a join reason mod and boy can they come up with some doozies as reason why they wish to join.

[Ed2]

This program is working great.. on my other forum been using Anti-Spam Verification Questions which eliminates just about all bot applicants.  Seems that Stop Spammer opens the door for BOT applicants..yes it catches them..but I continuously have to delete identified spammers.

Is there any way to incorporate "Anti-Spam Verification Questions" with "Stop Spammer"?

Thanks

[Kindred]

questions are a standard feature in SMF 2.0

[Ed2]

questions are a standard feature in SMF 2.0

Where is the question menu? I can't locate it in my SMF 2.0 Admin area.

[Kindred]

http://wiki.simplemachines.org/smf/Security_and_Moderation

[Ed2]

http://wiki.simplemachines.org/smf/Security_and_Moderation

Kindred

THANK YOU...could not locate that info on my own and I did look.

[SD-X]

http://wiki.simplemachines.org/smf/Security_and_Moderation

Kindred

THANK YOU...could not locate that info on my own and I did look.

If you still can't find it, in SMF 2.0.x: Admin -> Configuration -> Security and Moderation -> Anti-Spam -> Scroll down to "Verification Questions".
It will be in a different location in SMF 1.x, however I don't have that specific information available off-hand.