Gonna be awhile, it needs much more beta testing, as well as a few things added to it.

Body count: 4478

Well over 5,200 attempts blocked so far, on four sites now. This is the only spam protection running on these sites. No spam registration successes. NO legitimate humans blocked or in any way interfered with.

Still taking volunteers for Beta testing.

Some features this has:

• Logging - excellent easy to read and navigate, logging for this in ACP. Includes IP, username tried, email used, user agent string, and what checks failed. Also includes date/timestamp, and also time elapsed while registering. Leaves no doubt at all, it's spammers stopped not legitimate people.

• Reporting - Optional to have each incident posted in a designated thread, by a designated account. Includes all data shown above.

• "Test mode" - Lets you test this Plugin for assurance of function.

• "Show stats to groups" - Lets you decide who sees the statistics for this plugin, in WoL.

We anticipate vBorg release in 2-3 weeks. Still working out some additional features and functions. Would love to have some more Beta testers. If you become a tester, you get to find out first hand what the hell we're actually doing with this and be on the cutting edge of something really special.

Will test if you want

Ok PM sent.

I don't really get bots because I use Cloudflare, but I would like to take a look at the code of the plugin.

Do you run any anti-spam plugins and/or native vBulletin anti-spam stuff?

Just Cloudflare and reCAPTCHA, no anti-spam plugin from vBulletin.org.

Native vB human verification of any type? Is the reCaptcha native?

We ask the testers to turn off ALL anti-spam stuff for testing, in case you would like to try it. My experience with CF tells me you'll be surprised how many bots get through and try to register.

It's the one built into vBulletin, yes.
I probably don't get any bots because I have "Under attack mode" in Cloudflare turned on at all times, something that's mandatory for a gaming community due to DDoS attacks. This mode requires JavaScript which probably stops pretty much all non-human visitors.

I don't mind to give it a shot though by disabling reCAPTCHA.

It will give you a full report of anything it does catch. No need to mess with your CF settings but yeah, lose the reCaptcha at least.

How about a link to that beta?

Meet me over at Ozzy's place, saw you there earlier. PM waits.

5,670 - 0 Now.

Still waiting for a pm from ozzy for the plugin to test

You're on the list.

So how does it deal with tapatalk in-app registration (if enabled)? I'm just curious because tapatalk in-app reg bypasses the vB screening stuff.

Not sure, as I don't use that, and it obviously has its own deal and bypasses vBulletin stuff.

Does it work with VB5 ?

Well, tapatalk defaults to in-app registration. Last I checked, leaving in-app reg enabled on the plugin would divert away from all forum registration security measures configured on vB (i.e., CAPTCHA, random questions, anti-spam plugin interventions, etc). The tapatalk in-app reg process only required that a user enter an email address and a password to complete registration. I'm unsure whether or not tapatalk has fixed the issue.

If you're at all interested concerning the above described behavior, here's a thread in which forum owners were trying to get tapatalk developers to address the issue or at least come up with a workaround for vB 3.x/4.x as applicable to various devices: https://support.tapatalk.com/threads...rations.20426/

Has no effect on it whatsoever. And couldn't possibly. Tapatalk is enabled on two of the testing forums already for this, no issues at all.

By the way the body count for The Spaminator across the five test sites is well over 8,000 kills, no wins by the spam, and no humans in any way interfered with or annoyed.To my knowledge that hasn't been explored yet. Certainly not at present, would have to be ported and that is IF it can be.

Right now it's working with 3.8.8 and 4.2.2

So just to be clear, this means that on a forum with tapatalk's in-app member registration enabled, if Spaminator has been implemented and enabled as well, a tapatalk user will not be able to simply register and become a forum member via the in-app provision by merely entering a username, an email address and a password?

The Spaminator doesn't affect registration via Tapatalk in any way. With it or without it, no difference at all for the Tapatalk user.

Check it with your Tapatalk enabled phone, Here and Here.

IF the forum is set to where the TT user must use the vBulletin registration, there is no effect whatsoever, either.

Then, despite the presence of Spaminator, what's to stop spammers from successfully registering via tapatalk's in-app forum registration and thus gaining thread creation/posting privileges? There must be something I'm not grasping here.

By default, TT uses StopForumSpam as a check on spammer registration via the app. So, let's say a spammer who isn't blacklisted by SFS does get through via TT. That is fine, the Human Spam moderation part of the Spaminator takes care of its spammy posts, if any.

IF the site has TT set to where the TT user must use the vBulletin registration form, same thing. If he is a human he will have no problems getting registered. Spaminator is designed to go totally unnoticed.

Because XRumer and other automated registration/posting systems allow IP and user agent spoofing, I am yet to see a actual spammer using a actual real mobile device, to spam. But, he's covered if he does - whether he gets registered via TT or by the native vB register form.

Okay. So there are currently no automated spamming apps (like XRumer) designed to register and commence spamming through mobile device plugins like tapatalk... And even if someone develops one, any attempted submission of a spam post after successful registration by such a bot would be acted upon by Spaminator forthwith. And any human, whether they have registered via vB or TT, would be similarly acted upon by Spaminator immediately upon an attempt at spam submission. So Spaminator apparently doesn't intervene on real humans (somehow it knows... via timing or whatever) at the member sign-up stage, but will in fact block attempted automatic registrations in addition to precluding any ability to submit spam posts. At least that's the way it sounds.

And yes, I've read that for a while now tapatalk has indeed been auto-checking email addys and IPs against the SFS database before granting registration. But if a spammer occasionally happens to acquire an unlogged IP and email address, and if said spammer happens to be a human who initially registers via TT's in-app system (perhaps uncommon but it could happen), that human spammer would obviously escape all of the vB sign-up screening measures. But never fear... Spaminator would still terminate that human's efforts to post any spam messages and presumably block them from any subsequent forum activities. I hope I'm understanding this correctly.

Thanks

Other than, said human would never know it has been blocked or interfered with in any way, yeah.

Nope, no hooks.

Spaminator broke the 10,000 kill mark with still, zero spam registration successes on the five testing sites and NO legitimate humans in any way annoyed or interfered with.

Still, not even a month operating.

Still waiting for the pm dont see why it takes so long maybe I might just wait until the plugin is posted

We are adding another element to the mod, it is taking a bit to get it added.

Yes, but Max has been asking over and over for testers and when I say I will help I get no plugin to test so if you really need testers why not give them, the plugin in a pm asap and not keep them waiting would it not make the plugin be released faster if more test it

We're making a list of volunteer testers. The preliminary tests are happening on our own sites, the larger test will be a test of the full product. We haven't added any testers beyond our own sites as yet - you're not being left out I assure you.

Ok, as I was not getting a pm I thought I was not needed just wish you pmed me and told me it might take a few days or weeks to get the plugin

Yes earlier in the thread I said "you're on the list" and I should have made that less vague, my apologies. We appreciate your volunteering.

We still need more volunteers for the full product test, for anyone reading.

Just release it as a beta here, so you can get this helpful 100% bulletproof never going to be broken addon into the hands of people who need it.

I would prefer to start with a handful of users first, to make sure there is no unfound bugs before releasing it to the masses, quality control. :)

Using the community as a whole as guinea pigs, as it were. When responsible pre-testing saves everyone the trouble, and respects their time.

Just come out of the closet and say you want to volunteer, Zach. We'd love to have you test this monster for yourself, sincerely.

Spaminator well up over 12,000 kills now, with still zero successes by any type of spam.

Whats the point in zach saying he will test when you still have not given anything to many of the ones who said they would test

You can't know no legitimate humans were block or annoyed- just that none complained. Only a small percentage of humans would make an attempt to reach you if blocked- most would just move on.