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We are using this on one heavily spammed forum. In viewing the moderation queue, we apply certain other criteria (which I'm not going to list) to make the decision as to whether to delete or validate the registration. |
Thank you, very useful mod! I got rid of the Russian spammers which were very persistent.
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Nice Mod!!
Thanks!!! : ) |
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Thanks again and waiting for the first :D |
Depends.. I built this for a forum that is for a very specific region of the US and would really not garner much international interest. I moderate all registrations outside of the US and Canada just because there is a 99.9% chance they are spam.
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Then that's fine for a local forum. For a global ones it's better the second way.
Thanks again Jafo232 :beer: |
Ive got a question does this mod show which location their ip is from once they are placed in moderation?
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To check IP addresses, you can use an online IP Lookup service like Melissa or Country IP Lookup, or use a desktop application like IPNetInfo. All of these are free services or freeware, by the way. |
Great Mod.
Hope you are planing to make this work with VB4. let me know as I have VB4 running right now |
any chance of updating to VB4 I love your mod but am going to vb4 soon. Your mod eliminates all that are not using a proxy, which kills 99% spamers would love to see a banned version rather than moderated. Might look at code after transfer of vb4
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This will probably be the first mod I convert over. Part of me thinks it might work right anyway. No timetable yet..
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I've installed this mod on vb 4.0 and it working just like on 3.8.
Some suggestions that would be nice for any update: 1) An Active/Inactive switch (I like this in all mods) so one doesn't need to go to the Plugins & Products area to disable 2) Toggle for whether it will exclude or include the listed countries for moderation (as per the instructions in message #7 above showing how to alter the whois.php file) 3) Click to update zone files (or at least a reminder URL link to the site) using wget. 4) A reminder of the date when the zone files were last updated (perhaps just a read of the date for one major zone file). Thanks for this useful mod. -- Rik |
I only wish I had found this mod sooner. A definite for the constant fight against spam.
Im surprised more people dont use it. :up: |
This is a nice mod, but wouldn't it be both more accurate and more "updated" to simply use use mod_geoip for Apache2 and install the free MaxMind GeoIP database which is (claimed to be) 99.5% accurate at the country level?
Then the code could be much more simple, to simply match the white list (or black list) vB options country code with the country code from a very simple Apache2 mod_geoip function: Code:
$_SERVER['GEOIP_COUNTRY_CODE'] |
I think that this is one of the best mods available for VBulletin anywhere. If it is improved, I would sure be interested but it's already about the best thing out there.
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If we take the suggestions from Rik and add a option to use mod_geoip versus the large flat file database, it would be quite an improvement. |
You are certainly entitled to your opinion but I'll stick with my statement. There are a lot of mods that work very well and some have those extra features that you mention but the simple fact is, spam is a problem for many forums and if used properly, this does more than anything I've ever tried in reducing the amount of spam.
Other mods are sometimes fun, helpful, whatever but this one is almost essential. So no, I don't that my statement is "odd" at all. |
Our forums get almost no spam, around 4 million PVs a month, and we don't use this mod. The best way to stop spam is to use a Bayesian classifier. This is how Google GMail works and this is how we do it on our forum. We wrote our own custom Bayesian classifier for spam management, and it works very good.
So, while you have a strong favorable opinion about this particular mod, and you certainly are entitled to be the mod cheerleader, you should also respect others opinions to help improve the mod. Your posts / replies to suggestions seem to have no purpose but to push-back on suggestions for improvements. You don't want to see it improved? Isn't that "odd"? There has been on update in about a year, isn't that right? Using large flat files to map IP addresses is not the way GeoIP mapping is generally done. Most everyone who runs geo-targeted ads on their forums, including forums who use the free OpenX ad severing platform, use the GeoIP binary database I mentioned. Using large data sets of flat files is both inefficient and (often) inaccurate. There is no difference using geoip to target ads to countries than using geoip to block registration (or to take other actions based on IP address). The standard to do this is to use binary GeoIP databases (most people, including Apache, use the free MaxMind version). That is how we do it on 4 different servers and it works with 99.5% accuracy (the free version) and is updated monthly. The commercial version is said to be 99.8% accurate (which most people don't need). Not sure why you are arguing this point. Sorry, that is why I find your replies "odd", because, first of all this mod is not "essential". There are other ways that are considered "better" to manage spam (like using a Bayesian classifer, Akismet, etc.). Second, there are some basic features that all vB mods have (like an option to turn it on and off), and Third, there are much better (and faster, accurate and efficient) GeoIP databases, like the one used with Apache's mod_geoip, which is basically a "standard" these days (since it is also used at the core of the OpenX ad server as well). Having one GeoIP database is much better than two, especially when the one I am mentioning is basically the defacto standard for people who want GeoIP for free. On other technical point. The database this mod current uses does not identify Anonymous Proxy IP addresses. If you want to stop spam or block hacker registrations, you must be able to identify Anonymous Proxy servers. The database I am suggesting (and the one most forum owners use, BTW), identifies these Anonymous Proxy servers. |
You know what? I said right off that you were titled to your opinion and all I did was remark that I really like this mod. YOU are the one who seems to want to argue about it. I also said that I would sure be interested if it were improved even more.
OK...I give up...you win. I like this mod. It works very well for us. I will continue to use it and am happy with it. If it is improved upon or something better is released, I will certainly take a look at it. Now that's all I have to say about it. I suspect that you are one of those people who just MUST have the last word so go ahead....knock yourself out. I guess my only question would be that if there are already such far superior products out there to do this, why are you even concerned about this one? |
Great! I will.
First of all, people who are interested in taking any actions based on geo location should install mod-geoip if they are running Apache2. mod-geoip uses the geoip database from MaxMind. OpenX, the world's largest free ad server, also uses MaxMind's free binary geo-database. In addition, instead of only working at the country level, you can also install a free version of MaxMind's geoip city database, that provides granularity at the city and even zip code level. We generally don't work to that level, but some do. Also, MaxMind does a fairly good job with anonymous proxy servers. It is important to locate them; as most good spammers and hackers do not login from their banned country code, LOL. Only novice spammers and hackers login from the actual IP address. All experienced ones use Anonymous Proxy servers. OBTW, dknelson, it's good you gave me the last word on this; I'm not arguing with you, I am just clarifying misinformation you posted earlier. If you want to discuss further, I can easily continue in a knowledgeable and accurate way. I have many years of experience in anti-spam and geo-targeting applications. You can ask any question you like. Nothing personal at all. I am sure you are a great guy and your bike forum looks fun and friendly! I did notice your forum does not run an ad server, so that may explain why you are not very familiar with state-of-the-art geo-location technologies, mod-geoip, and other geoip databases that are more advanced than the one in this mod. Ask away if you want to learn.. I will not be around in this mod-thread very long. Thanks. |
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I don't think any agrees with you, djbaxter.
You are simply a mod cheer leader who does not understand what he is talking about and is not interested to learn more. You have provided no relevant technical information and you reject knowledge, as if knowledge is some kind of distasteful virus, LOL. Plus, you are also not honest, since you said you were not going to post a reply and not argue, but you prove that (1) you don't understand geo-location, (2) you don't understand anti-spam technology, and (3) you like to argue about things you really have little clue about. You should try to learn about geo-location and other technologies and contribute v. just being a forum-mod cheer leader (and a dishonest one at that!) Ask some useful question, if you care about this mod... and try to improve it, if you have the technical ability. |
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These mods and capabilities are pretty standard these days. For those small number of forums who don't, they can configure geoip in many other ways too. Please see the MaxMind API documentation. They describe many APIs (Perl, PHP, C, Java, etc). Did you read the MaxMind GeoIP API docs? |
As someone who has a lot of experience with other peoples shared server you are wrong. It is not installed on the vast majority.
As for using the API, sure, that is an option, but then you open up several other issues:
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I think you don't understand GeoIP, Jafo !!
Most people run the database on their server and don't make a remote call back to the remote (the MaxMind) web site ! You really have not read the full documentation and you have no experience installing GeoIP. Do you really think that the only way to use GeoIP is to make a remote call back to their (the MaxMind) server?? Really? |
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You might work for multi-million dollar websites; but you don't understand anything about GeoIP. You have never installed it. You have not read the documentation. You know nothing about it. PS: Multi-million dollar web sites don't run on shared hosting. Sounds like you work on little tiny web sites, LOL, Since only small web sites run on shared hosting without root access. You can argue now, and you can hurl all the insults you want; but the bottom line is that you have no idea what you are talking about. While I am off "picking my nose", why don't you go download the GeoIP API you like and install it and learn something about what you need to learn. If you are such a great "web guru on multi million dollar sites" you can update your mod to use GeoIP before I get a chance to do "the pickin'" Your mod is really poorly written. Why not listen and improve it? Edit: Why do you think OpenX Ad server, which serves more ads that any (free) ad server on the market, uses GeoIP? |
Listen you little imp,
GeoIP is about as important to me as the booger you just ate. I work with API's that make GeoIP look as small as your penis. Go back to work at your fastfood joint and leave programming and server administration to the professionals. The shared hosting I speak of is from the thousands of installs a level 7 vb coder has to support. Where are you on this list? Oh, you're not even on it. I DONATE my time to make mods. All you do is talk smack and develop NOTHING. You're opinion does not matter. |
Great mod, many thanks.
Here's a country code list for Western developed countries only and their associated overseas territories, in case anyone else has a forum that is predoiminantly frequented by people from those types of countries: AU,AS,GU,JP,DE,DK,FR,FI,NZ,PH,SG,TH,AG,BS,BB,BM,CA ,MQ,PR,KN,LC,US,UM,VG,VI,ZA,BR ,FK,AN,BE,HR,CY,CZ,GR,IS,IE,IL,IT,JO,KW,LB,LI,MC,M S,ML,NO,PL,PT,ES,SE,CH,GB |
Worked for a few weeks, but now having problems.
I've got Austria in my whitelist (AT), yet registrations from that country are moderated. China, Vietnam, Pakistan and Sri Lanka are getting through, despite not being on the whitelist. All zone files are current, installed in the proper location, and world-readable. Valid country codes are all properly separated with commas. Nice concept, but it's not working. For many of us, a blacklist of countries would work better than a whitelist, especially considering that there's certain countries with a reputation as being forum spam friendly (China, Russia, India, Pakistan, Vietnam, Philippines, Belarus, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Nigeria) |
I have used this mod for several years and love it
Stops most spam from even being seen Is there any way of making it compatible with cloudflare |
I installed the mod, it had only us and ca could join, an hour after install I get anew spammer 91.207.5.198
That is from Ukraine How can I fix the problem Thanks Otis For any advice |
THanks for this. I sure hope it helps.
Dave |
I'd like to install this but what actually happens when a registration is put in Moderation? Is the forum Admin notified by email?
I'm assuming that this kicks-in after the registrant's email has been verified? Also, once you approve the user, are they then sent the forum 'welcome' email or do we need to do this manually? |
Anyone?
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I think there are also other mods here at vb.org that will send an admin email for users or posts awaiting moderation. Quote:
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Many thanks. Installed. :)
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