Stop Spammer

[PopUpSteve]

If I'm following your question correctly, you would go to "Admin" / "Members" / "Awaiting Approval" on your forum. Depending what your settings are for the MOD, you would see what SFS has flagged as reported spammers. It could be one, some, or all of these items:

• Username
• Email Address
• IP Address

If the icon () in front of one of those items is red, then that item was found in the SFS database as a reported spammer. If it's blue, then that item passed. If it's yellow, then that item could not be checked. Most likely, when it's yellow the connection to SFS is down. You should keep checking the yellow ones until they either pass (blue) or fail (red).

When the icon is red, you can click on it and see all the reports for that item on SFS.

The way I use the reports is like this.

Not to offend anyone but, since the subject matter on my site would really only be of legitimate interest to people in only a few countries, mostly English speaking countries, I block IP Address ranges from other countries. I've developed the list over the last two years as spammers hit my site and their IP is flagged in SFS with numerous entries. The top five ranges are:

Banned Entity	Hits
IP: 180.*.*.*	131,973
IP: 60.166-175.*.*	44,070
IP: 123.112-127.*.*	17,000
IP: 27.152-159.*.*	11,571

Anyone hitting my site from a banned IP Range will get the following message:

Your IP Address range and/or Email Domain has been flagged for excessive spamming.

If you are a registered member and are receiving this message, please make note of the time/date & IP address and report it to the website administrator.

That way, I don't have to deal with repeat spammers. Right now, I have 582 IP Ranges blocked with a total of 361,489 hits in just over two years.

If you see there are only a few reports on an IP Address with the reported dates are spread out, and they all have different email addresses (and the one you are checking is not on the email list), then it's most likely not a spammer.

But this is just how I use the MOD. You have to develop your own method of managing the reported spammers.

[MoreBloodWine]

Correct me if I'm wrong but this used the same check system at stopforumspam that the mod Stop Forum Spam uses right ?

If so, I think I might uninstall Stop Forum Spam since this mod does the same thing it does with the ability to check, approve members etc.

[Kindred]

both mods do that same thing, to the best of my knowledge....

[MoreBloodWine]

both mods do that same thing, to the best of my knowledge....

Yes and no, this one has functionality the other does not. My question was that they both use the same site stopforumspam.com for their checks.

Either way I'll probably just end up removing the other mod since as you said they both do the same thing with this one having more functionality.

[Kindred]

yes, they both hit the SFS database

[busterone]

I tried them both out at the same time on test sites, and this one does have more functionality, so I went with this one. That was at least 2 years ago, maybe longer, so unless the other one has made some major changes,  this one is the one. 

[butchs]

I use a variant of this mod.  Possibly an older version.  It does a great job.

[kitz]

Any suggestion for help please.   Ive been using this mod successfully for about 5yrs since it first started and Ive been using v2.3.9 for quite a while without issue.

About 2 months ago we started having to manually check new users, didnt think too much of it at the time since it's only a couple a day.
Then about 2 weeks ago, I noticed that it seemed to be highlighting all new registrations be they good or bad.  ie the yellow magnifying glass.   

Now I am aware that SFS has been down for the past couple of days, but it should now be up again - linky.

When I look at Admin > Members > Registration > Settings.   I see the following message "Mod Stop Spammer is ON but there is no connection just now with Stop Forum Spam. Please try later."


My server has FSOCKOPEN
Ive not installed any new mods in over a year (Tapatalk)  & the other mod I have is httpBL


-----

Edited to add after having checked my admin logs against the new users.. its been flagging all new accounts since about the 15th of July.

Other measures such as the honeypot, registration questions, blacklists etc normally catch most first line spammers, but SFS is very useful as another defence and picks up on average a couple a day that have got through the other methods.

[Cutter65]

Any suggestion for help please.   Ive been using this mod successfully for about 5yrs since it first started and Ive been using v2.3.9 for quite a while without issue.

About 2 months ago we started having to manually check new users, didnt think too much of it at the time since it's only a couple a day.
Then about 2 weeks ago, I noticed that it seemed to be highlighting all new registrations be they good or bad.  ie the yellow magnifying glass.   

Now I am aware that SFS has been down for the past couple of days, but it should now be up again - linky.

When I look at Admin > Members > Registration > Settings.   I see the following message "Mod Stop Spammer is ON but there is no connection just now with Stop Forum Spam. Please try later."


My server has FSOCKOPEN
Ive not installed any new mods in over a year (Tapatalk)  & the other mod I have is httpBL


-----

Edited to add after having checked my admin logs against the new users.. its been flagging all new accounts since about the 15th of July.

Other measures such as the honeypot, registration questions, blacklists etc normally catch most first line spammers, but SFS is very useful as another defence and picks up on average a couple a day that have got through the other methods.

I have been having to do all manual checking from new members also lately. Maybe stopforumspam has changed there code or something.

[Cutter65]

I found the fix for the connecting to the database issue on the stopforumspam forum.

http://www.stopforumspam.com/forum/viewtopic.php?id=5521

You will need to edit your Stop Spammer.php file

Find

Code Select Expand

//$remoteXML = 'http://www.stopforumspam.com/api?' . ('127.0.0.1' != $check_ip ? "ip={$check_ip}&" : '') . 'username=' . urlencode($check_name) . '&email=' . $check_mail;
$remoteXML = 'http://www.stopforumspam.com/api?' . ('127.0.0.1' != $check_ip ? ($modSettings['stopspammer_check_ip'] ? 'ip=' . $check_ip . '&' : '') : '') . ($modSettings['stopspammer_check_name'] ? 'username=' . urlencode($check_name) . '&' : '') . ($modSettings['stopspammer_check_mail'] ? 'email=' . urlencode($check_mail) : '');

Change the API url to this

Code Select Expand

//$remoteXML = 'http://us.stopforumspam.org/api?' . ('127.0.0.1' != $check_ip ? "ip={$check_ip}&" : '') . 'username=' . urlencode($check_name) . '&email=' . $check_mail;
$remoteXML = 'http://us.stopforumspam.org/api?' . ('127.0.0.1' != $check_ip ? ($modSettings['stopspammer_check_ip'] ? 'ip=' . $check_ip . '&' : '') : '') . ($modSettings['stopspammer_check_name'] ? 'username=' . urlencode($check_name) . '&' : '') . ($modSettings['stopspammer_check_mail'] ? 'email=' . urlencode($check_mail) : '');

[Mordecki]

Hello there,
i have been browsing this topic and tried to find answer to my question but i couldn't find any solution, can someone help me out ?
The thing is, i can't install packages from Admin panel because whenever i upload any package, the page turns white and i can't do anything anymore.
So i tried to do the manual installation, and i followed all steps, and i am having just that one error when i enter Admin panel > Members > View all members.

Unknown column 'mem.is_spammer' in 'field list'
File: /public_html/forum/Sources/Subs-Members.php
Line: 1223

And this is something i can't figure out because i already added the definition of spammer like the instructions said

'member_ip' => $regOptions['interface'] == 'admin' ? '127.0.0.1' : $user_info['ip'],
'member_ip2' => $regOptions['interface'] == 'admin' ? '127.0.0.1' : $_SERVER['BAN_CHECK_IP'],
'is_spammer' => empty($regOptions['spammer']) ? 0 : $regOptions['spammer'],
'validation_code' => $validation_code,
'real_name' => $regOptions['username'],

I'm running on SMF 2.0.5.
Apologies if this was already mentioned but i couldn't find it anywhere.
Recently my forum has been constantly under spam attacks, so i would really appreciate help with this.

Thanks !

[Kindred]

You did not do the database portion of the install.

For the white screen issue, read the FAQ in the wiki

[OliB150]

Been using SFS for a while now and thought the other day "It would be really useful if there was a mod for this..." so I checked and here it was.

It has all the functionality I was looking for, but one thing I've noticed whilst using it was that when pressing "Report these members" on the "Awaiting Approval" page, I think it would also be a good function to delete them. Or at least give the option to.

[NeonFlash]

My issue with the SFS mod on the SMF forum continues. It is unable to connect to the SFS API successfully to check the members.

I have discussed more about it earlier in the post here:

http://www.simplemachines.org/community/index.php?topic=283309.msg3525030#msg3525030

I also noticed that another member, kitz, is facing a similar issue with the Mod as well in this post:

http://www.simplemachines.org/community/index.php?topic=283309.msg3600511#msg3600511

I tried the suggestion provided by Cutter65 here:

http://www.simplemachines.org/community/index.php?topic=283309.msg3602562#msg3602562

But that did not make it work. I changed the Domain in the code to us.stopforumspam.com as suggested, but the issue persists.

By the way, I think the API is no longer active at us.stopforumspam.com right now.

In the StopSpammer.php file, it forms the remoteXML data as follows:

Code Select Expand

http://www.stopforumspam.com/api?ip=120.33.245.134&username=eunnfbql77&email=lighthillto%40sina.com

This entire remoteXML data is passed to the fetch_web_data() function and the return value is stored in $down_ok which is later checked to confirm whether connection to SFS db failed or not.

Code Select Expand

$down_ok = fetch_web_data($remoteXML);

fetch_web_data() does make use of the Fsockopen() function, but as is the case with the other member, kitz here, in my case also, this PHP function is not blocked or disabled.

Now, if you use this URL:

Code Select Expand

http://www.stopforumspam.com/api?ip=120.33.245.134&username=eunnfbql77&email=lighthillto%40sina.com

to check the status of a member with the name: "eunnfbql77", IP address: 120.33.245.134 and email address: "[email protected]", you will notice that the API responds successfully flagging on the IP address and the Email Address.

But the connection fails when it is made through the PHP script executing on my site. So, yes, most likely, there is something that is preventing the connection to be made.

Now, how do I check this?

Is there a way to log any outbound connection attempt from my site? Probably then, I could go to the Admin Panel, check any particular member on the Forum, click the "Check this Member" button and then look up the log file to see whether my site attempted a connection to SFS API or not.

If there is such a way, then it would help to resolve the issue.

Thanks.

[kitz]

Ive still not got to the bottom of this and currently the mod has been removed, but I would really like to get it working again.

At one point I thought it would be a good idea to remove the mod and start again with a fresh package, but it refuses to install/uninstall correctly as you can see here.  It mucked up my site, but luckily I was able to restore from a backup.   Storman kindly tried to assist but he couldnt get it to work either suggesting perhaps it was a permissions issue.   
My hosts have assured me it isnt, and they even SSH'd into the server to attempt a change of settings themselves, but still cant get this installed and working right.

I've no idea why it worked fine for 5 yrs, then sometime around July the API just stopped working... nor why now I cant get it to install again correctly.

Thank you for responding, I thought I was on my own with this.

But the connection fails when it is made through the PHP script executing on my site.

Ditto - I cant find any reason for this, my hosts are even letting me test another server and Im just waiting for them to set it up.   
Should add this isnt a cheapo package,  nor is it shared hosting and there's no reason why I should have permission issues.

[MoreBloodWine]

I don't know if it's this mod or Stop Forum Spam that produces thesee "errors" but assuming it's this mod. I don't really care to know that these "errors" happen. So I have a question, would you consider adding an option that a forum admin can check in the mod settings area to suppress these errors from the error log ?

I'm also posting this on the other mods discussion page to cover my bases.

Guest
58.23.37.174   
    Today at 02:07:05 AM
44b716c09d086dd15320829787dec535
Type of error: General 
http://www.dust514corps.com/index.php?action=register2The user david93444 with Email [email protected] (IP 58.23.37.174) is a Spam, please contact forum administrator

[DarkAngel612]

personally I welcome these notices...they are not an error per se but can be very helpful. You go to the banning section and enter the triggers for email and ip then hit ban and that takes care of the spammer. otherwise if not wanted then just clear out the error log

[busterone]

I have been using this mod for several years and have never had an error like that in my forum error log. The mod has blocked over 69,000 attempts in those 2 years without that error so I wonder if it comes from some custom coding on your site.

[Kindred]

It also seems that MoreBloodWine might have **BOTH** of the SFS mods installed, despite the fact that they do the same thing...

[DarkAngel612]

It is possible since I do remember getting them myself. I also had both installed at the same time and since keeping this mod only---I had maybe 3 in one year.