Nothing, error.

@alpha1 if you have profile spam for users who are part of the group that is pending activation (e.g. those bots that did not click the email link) then permission them with lower options in that group so that they can do basically nothing. We don't allow such things especially signatures unless they are a member of the registered user group.

That stuff is all part of vBulletin, not this mod.

@JorgeX yes I can add it if it becomes a popular request sometime in version 2.

Why are these errors occurring? the registrations are stopped, but I am getting these dB errors for some of them....

vBulletin 4.0.8, no other dB errors exist except these. Additionally, should there be an index on the glowhostspamomatic_remotecache table?, as there is none after install.

That is an error generated by the MySQL server not the script itself. The most common reason for the MySQL server has gone away error is that the server timed out and closed the connection.

You can read more about this problem and ask your host to increase the timeout if it is set too low. There can be other reasons as well. Here is a link that explains the error.

http://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.0/en/gone-away.html

As for the index, probably I will look at it a little closer later today and add it into the 2.0 version if its not there already.

My database is highly tuned, and there are no timeouts that occur on anything except this mod. I have a deep DBA background and have tuned as much as can be on MySQL dB. This is not a shot at you, by any means, however, I am quite sure my dB parameters are all in proper order, and considering the tables for this mod are very small, a simple insert or select should not induce the classic "MySQL has gone away errors". The question remains as to why this is only occurring against tables for this mod. None are crashed, however, I will re-analyze & check to ensure I am correct.

Thanks for your response, along with this mod, it is quite effective.

<<update>> I increased the wait timeout too see if that addresses the issue, and will refine from there if it does.

I seem to be getting a lot of excess hits to my database from reported spammer IPs who are not logged but have a lot of page views this is causing long delays for legitimate users , will this mod address that ? As small as my forum is I hate to go to a virtual dedicated server to accommodate spammers. Or should I just blame Network solutions for their poor service since April .

Sorry, I am not following. Can you describe in more detail what you mean about hits to your database from reported spammers? Do you mean they are being blocked but still are looking at your site which is overloading it?

Why not block the IPs using .htaccess or if NetSol is that terrible, I know of a great host...

Having the same issue. Actually, similar. The submit button does nothing when you click on it... doesnt appear to be "pressed" or anything.

VB 4.0.6

Spam-O-Matic has caught and nailed about 50 fake spammer registration attempts since I installed it. I could not be happier. I am running 4.0.8 and since I have installed the mod, not one phony spammer has gotten through, yet not one legitimate participant's registration has been blocked.

Thanks for the great spam-roller!

+1 Great work!

hi, is there a feature to scan the current database and remove spambots before the mod was installed?

There is a path error when checking the log

http://forums.fedoraforum.org/adminc...e.php?do=posts

It has a extra modcp in the path

I do not have any blocking Agents installed however like you said they are looking at the site and overloading the already over sold network solutions database. .
basically what I was asking is if this mod did the .htaccess function or would help to make it. I am still enough of a noob to not know how to do that yet.

I have turned my blog off because of the lack of mod tools and it attracts spammers like flies.

I think I read this before starting this comment but I also want to Know if there is a feature that will alert me to spam registered IPs with current members so I can go back and delete them.

yeah what he ask ?

You forgot to change version number to 1.2.8 in xml file.

just added this, hope it works :)

[high]* Brandon Sheley clicks install[/high]

No, because on very large boards that would mean submitting one query for each existing user to StopForumSpam.com. They have a 5000 query per day limit so that would end up getting the larger boards banned from using their service. Unless, we built in some queue mechanism to send batches of users for checking against their database, but that is a bit out of the scope of what we want to do with this mod, plus it is not nice to submit huge batches to a service like SFS.

That has been addressed in the upcoming 2.x series.

Yes, that was addressed a few posts ago, but thanks for the reminder :)

This mod does not alter htaccess or ban any IPs. it checks a remote database for known spammers and prevents them from registering.

Permanently banning IPs is not usually a great thing since you can end up blocking legitimate traffic to your site.

Thank you, I didn't really think banning Ips was a great Idea but there are certily blocks that have no business on my local site.

It would be nice to have the ability to scan several users Far under the 5k limit, for example I currently have 256 users I suspect about 70 of them are bots. Perhaps there is a seperate tool that might do that.

You could create another usergroup in vBulletin and give that group low permissions like inability to do anything other than post, move those 70 users to the new group, then use the promotion system to change them to the regular registered members group after 10 posts or so that way you will be able to tell if they are doing anything bad or not because the only way they would get full permissions is by making legitimate posts. And I don't think many spammers or bots will waste their time writing 10 legit posts because it is easier to just find another forum to spam from.

The 2.0 version of this mod actually does that part automatically for new registrations. But no plans for making it process existing users as it is generally pointless to try to go back in time and out if old registrations even exist on the blacklist anymore, which they probably do not.

In my experience, in general your bot registrations are going to not be doing much of anything if you do not see spam from them within the day or so after they register.

thats true, and It puzzles me as to why they bother, they just become these old sleepers that skew the statistics and inflate the membership numbers.

1.2.7 works well on 3.8.6 Patch Level 1 with renamed admincp and modcp directories.

I downloaded 1.2.8 but my admin cp reports 1.2.7 installed.

Not all bots are spambots. Some are there to spread malware. That is why they are quiet.

Ahh, I do know that some malware misdirects google ads to display the smiley central banner, I hate that Ad HELLLLLLLLLLO

I read something on google today says that it does work, posted by you :)

Can you confirm for the rest of us that you like it, or it has helped, or is useful in some way?

Feedback here is what drives this mod.

Everyone, Let us know what you think please :)

Since I've installed this mod my spammers have gone to zero. Not one have gotten past the registration much less a chance to post.

Cheers and thanks for sharing this great mod with the vB community. :):up:

Since spamers are using almost standard emails i put only to search email and in that way until now (100 spamers) didn't break into forum...

And if someone break I have 10 messages without able to post URL. That should be enough to remove them.

Thnx for good work

Installed on 4.07 ...amazed at how many spambots it has stopped in less than a day

but noticed in the logs a lot of email addresses which don't include an "@" symbol
yet they still get passed on to the vB registration system
is this normal?

Edit: never mind found answer in your previous post - hey i'm a noob :)
https://vborg.vbsupport.ru/showpost....9&postcount=92

Additionally
Is there a way to get as good a log from the Vbulletin Registration system
as this mod provides?

I am getting this:
"Spam-O-Matic Tagged ip - 95.67.80.146 REMOTE_ERROR: Unverfied but allowed by policy"

It still seems to be allowing the registration though it's a known spammer on stopforumspam.com

Any ideas as to the problem. I have both my akismet api key and my stopforumspam api key set in the configuration.

This Mod is not working for me. As far as I can tell, I've got everything configured correctly. I'm close to uninstalling as the StopForumSpam mod worked well for me before.

Does anybody have any info on the REMOTE_ERROR posted above?

Thanks!

Spammers are getting in so I had to uninstall. Was hoping for great things.

If that process would log what the error is and not just that there WAS an error it would be more helpful. I found the code where the error is getting thrown but I don't know enough about the expected contents of the call to stopforumspam.

I have the vbStopForumSpam standalone installed now. I had it before and it was working great, so I'll go back to it for now until I hear some feedback.

Is there a way to have individual minimum postcount settings for keyword vs URL moderation?

It appears both are tied to this one setting:
Minimum postcount required to avoid keyword and URL moderation

ie: I would like to auto-moderate All user's posts for keywords
but only auto-moderate new member's URLs who are under minimum post count

In your settings for either mod, you have it set to allow registrations if your server cannot connect to stopforumspam.com. You can disable registrations if you cannot connect to stopforumspam.com but then you probably will have no registrations at all.

My guess is your site is firewalled by the stopforumspam.com site itself, or your server is blocking stopforumspam.com

Ask your host to help you figure out why your server cannot connect.

keyword moderation only works onusers who have not met the postcount minimum.

Thanks GlowHost.

I posted my findings to this issue over on the SFS thread.

Here is a link for anyone who'd like to read on.

https://vborg.vbsupport.ru/showpost....&postcount=240

I will be reinstalling S-O-M for its extra features.

You are welcome, thanks for posting your results. S-O-M should not be affected by this problem as this setting is not an option. Though the SFS option is supposed to not rely on this option if CURL is not available. Perhaps something changes at the SFS site that requires CURL.

Request for a new feature!
Can this flag a thread for spam IF ...
A new user creates a link in his signature ... and then posts.
OR
A new user adds a html link but doesnt post.

Auto-moderation does this already.

Really ... it doesnt seem to be working for me.

The test I ran was :
1) create an account
2) post
3) change sig to include a link.

JUst upgraded from 1.2.4 to 1.2.8 and I'm getting the error:

Warning: require_once(includes/functions_ghsom.php) [function.require-once]: failed to open stream: No such file or directory in [path]/register.php(333) : eval()'d code on line 4

Fatal error: require_once() [function.require]: Failed opening required 'includes/functions_ghsom.php' (include_path='.:/usr/lib/php:/usr/local/lib/php') in /home/*MYACCOUNT*/public_html/*MYPATH*/forum/register.php(333) : eval()'d code on line 4

A user reported it when going through resgistration and I got it on the admin CP user page. Any ideas? I 1st tried to overwrite the original install then I uninstalled and reinstalled but still get the error. I have now disabled and the error has gone.

Any ideas what's going on? I can't live without this mod!