I also want to chime in and thank you for this fantastic mod.

When recaptcha was cracked a couple of weeks ago, my (very new) forum was bombarded by spambots. It was relentless. This mod has stopped them all cold.

Just to add my thanks also. Just installed it on 3.8.5, with modified admin & mod cp folders and it works flawlessly.

I tried to sign up with the email address of a known spammer and it blocked it. Signed up under a test account, tried to post some spam, it placed it in the mod queue. Made a good post and it was fine, made a post with a link in it and it placed it in the mod queue.

Fantastic! :)

Awesome mod...it killed 19 spam registrations just yesterday and 7 today :D

I installed this on a new VB site (VB 4.0.6), and it installed okay, I uploaded all of the files, and everything looks like it should work, but nothing actually takes place. I have other sites that use SFS, and I have tested it before where I find a spammer on SFS, use their username and password, and it will not let me use it, and when I go look at the log files, it has entries of my action in there. This one has nothing in the log files.

Does anyone know of something that I might be doing wrong? I have API keys in both of the SFS and Askismet, so that does not seem like the problem.

Hi, I just installed today and see 4 registrations blocked already in the log within 10 minutes.

My question is, how can I test the system for all its options that they are working?

Reason I ask is that I registered a new account to watch it, then I went in the forum and created a quick post with just a link and a short sentence. The options say it's supposed to block posts with links if they have a post count lower than 5 and move it into moderation. This didn't happen and my test post was left alone with the link in it.

Just wondering if there is a way to test these features or do I have to create new accounts over and over? Either that, or tell me why the thread and post was left alone when the options say it's not supposed to allow links.

Any help would be great! Thanks.

Also I know it was mentioned that this doesn't work well with other anti-spam plugins, all I have is the recaptcha turned on, should that cause problems?

Hey great job with this Mod!

I do have one suggestion, and I apologize if this has already been suggested...

I think there should be an option when viewing the log to sort by IP address. Currently, there is only the option to sort by date, username, and email. It'd be useful to sort by IP address, and here's why: I'm looking through my MASSIVE log of blocked spammers (only had the mod installed for like 2 days, and I've blocked about 40 spammers...unbelievable), and I believe if there is an IP address being used MULTIPLE times on my site, I should just block that IP address. However, I can't tell by looking at the log how many times a given IP address has been used. Does that make sense? I'm not a big programmer myself, so I don't know how easy this will be, but I also think it'd be useful if the "sort by IP address" started with the ones that had the most entries. Make sense?

Very useful and practical mod! Much appreciated; keep up the great work...
Joe

Also, I did discover a bug...

In my logs, there is one entry that under message, I get a "found in Akismet database - held for moderation." Only, there is no user in the moderation queue. Additionally, the corresponding link returns a 404 error, because the link has /admincp/modcp/moderate.php etc. The link is valid if /admincp/ is removed and it's just /modcp/moderate.php etc.

But, even if I do this manually, it directs to the POSTS moderation queue instead of USERS moderation queue. But, again, even if the link were correct to the Users moderation queue, it wouldn't matter... the user was not placed in moderation queue.

Awesome mod, keep it up!

will this work with 4.1.1?

Yes, it does.

thankyou for the reply. i am installing it now.. :)

I downloaded the 1.2.8 link, but it says 1.2.7 in the products section.

Cheers for the 4.1.1 mention. You have to be so careful these days.

Hi I installed your mod (v1.28) on my vB 4.1.1 but other than the rejection log, I can't seem to find any of the interfaces you had in the screenshots. Am I missing something? How can i configure this?

Is there an new update to download yet? Really looking to get my RSS feeds working again.

I apologize if i missed this. I have installed with no issues but when I go to
AdminCP / Statistics and Logs / Glowhost-Spam-o-matic logs I get a 404 error. Now I just installed 30 min ago so either something is wrong or it does not generate a log until I catch an evil-doer

any suggestions

thank you in advance for your assistance

Great mod.
From the settings:
I need to check for key pharases not just keywords. Can I enter more than one word per line?
Hope someone can help with this.

Sorry if this has been answered before but when I go to ban someone though their profile on the admin cp it has a path of like sitename/modcp/banning.php? etc. but it 404s because my folder is named differently. What file do I edit to add in the correct path to banning.php?

@mrbigandwonderf
@ElfenLied1337

There are two instances of 'modcp' in upload/includes/functions_ghsom.php. Change both instances in that file to match the name of your modcp folder to prevent the 404 errors.

Either that, or wait for version 2.0 - scheduled for release 1st Feb ;) - which apparently solves that issue and several others.

To report back, we've had it installed now for a few weeks and the log shows just over 19,000 entries. Some of these are entries for legit registrations (would be nice to filter the entry types!), but even if you allow 1000 or so for legit reasons, you can see that this mod and blocked a hell of alot of registration requests.

Sure, some get through, but they're easy enough to mop up afterwards. I cannot recommend this mod enough. If there was a mod of the decade award, it should go to this mod.

My folder is called modcp :( I guess I will have to wait for 2.0

Have you uploaded the glowhostspamomatic.php file into your admincp folder?

Correct

Thank you for this! I've been wasting a couple of hours per day checking new registrations for spammers and deleting and reporting those found. Installed this a couple of hours ago and it's working great.

Great plugin, I have 1.2.7 installed on vb 3.8.3 with both keys.
Pre install I had between 60 - 100 spam registrations per day and the last 24 hrs, I was notified once about a new user but by the time i got to moderate them the system had already delt with it and deleted them - Superb
Brilliant plugin guys thanks.

Thanks mate, works now.

I'm having problems with this mod.
My RSS Poster bot is not being allowed to post the stuff it finds.. I also have another scheduled task that wont be allowed to post.
If I run these two scheduled tasks through the admin CP and I launch them manually, they work just fine.. But when they're being run automatically it wont allow them to be posted.
I disabled this mod and they worked fine.. Any fix?

Hi CheeSie

Yes, see here for your answer. We're eagerly awaiting the release of Version 2.0 :)

Thanks for your support maokaang :)

2.0 is coming soon! Just some final rounds of testing I am hoping for Monday, but Monday's are pretty bust at my "regular" job. so, lets say this week we should have something for all you good people.

Thanks everyone for the praise, it's great to know that what we did is helping and appreciated.

I think I can speak on behalf of the majority of the community, when I say that I look forward to your next release & deeply am thankful for the work you have placed into this modification. This is been the #1 modification to which has kept spam out of my community. :)

Well.... I have only read through this last page... can't imagine what is coming in the "new release" to make this better... but as it is, this is my #1 mod. In fact... had it not been for this mod... I might have just deleted my entire forum and gone fishing! I have had this installed since day 3... And I can't imagine what I would have done without it. this has worked so perfectly... I am afraid to even upgrade when the new version releases.... I have only had 2 successful spammers... and that was when recaptcha was broke. I since installed another mod that allows both recaptcha and question/answer... and have not had a single spammer since. I can't believe this is FREE!!!!

A new user got blocked because he used the same username as a spammer 'fox', but that was all that matched. Surely the mod should not block someone just becuase they choose the same username as a spammer?

Sure, if the email address matches then it should be an automatic rejection, but if any of the other checks return positive alone, then it shouldn't reject the registration?

No it does NOT, in fact it does not slow them down nowadays. I wouldnt bother with captcha or Q an A... They just blow right through it. It is a myth that Q an A stops them.

Q&A can be effective if you use questions that only your members can know and some 3rd world person that is hired to register accounts, can never answer. But that is quite difficult to do for sites that are not in a specific niche.

I certainly am very appreciative in regards to SOM and SFS.

This is a very real problem with automatic blocking. I can see how a short common word like 'fox' is not unique enough in this case.

Also, with dynamic IP address changes, some innocent user can be blacklisted because a spammer was assigned that IP a week ago...

I would like to see this mod assign values to each of the three factors, say 11 points for an email address match, 7 for an IP match and, for a username that matches the blacklist, one point for every character in the name.

The tripping point could be set initially at a total of about 10 points, but adjusted by the forum admin to suit the individual circumstances.

It would also be useful to modify the total points by the length of the Q & A response, if there is one. I find spammers often pour out all their rubbish into the Q&A response, whereas a "proper" answer is 10-20 characters only, (and never includes a URL).

Late edit- That would be difficult to do, because the spam check precedes registration, so any Q&A response would not be known when the 'spammer' decision is being made.

WS.

Totally agree.

Thanks for this.

Did anyone ever figure out the sesssion_start() errors? This is what I am receiving now when a member makes a post:

If you don't want it to examine usernames when considering to block a user or not, then you can simply change the settings to not check username.

Or, you can turn the "StopForumSpam: Remote Expiry" down to something lower than the default value.

Version 2 looks truly amazing. You have done a fabulous job!

Is it possible that version 2 might work in vb 3.8.x ?
or would you consider back porting version 2 for vb 3.8.x users?

Thanks :)

Version 2 definitely will not work in the 3.x forums. We probably will not be able to backport it because many of the functions in SOM 2.0 won't work with the old vB3.x hooks system.

Thanks for the answer. Hopefully one day I will be on vb 4 so I can use this fantastic product.