Yes unless you want to run version 1.2.4 or earlier.

How are you checking that? The results do not appear on their site for quite a while after submission. Last we tested, it was something like an hour before you could see them when posting from the API. I guess they have a cron setup to save server resources.

Are your logs updated indicating the submission was successful? If yes, then they were submitted because that is a response from SFS indicating the successful submission.

I turned Akismet off a week after I installed this mod. The false positives I am talking about now are during registration when this mod rejects legitimate users. I get emails from users all the time who ask for help registering because they get rejected on some random ip check.

Me too.

I see. Well, the 2 suggestions I have for that would be to:

1) Turn off the IP check
or
2) keep IP check on and turn "StopForumSpam: Remote Expiry" down to something less less, like 10 so that only newly found IPs are checked, instead of stuff from 3 months ago (90)

At the end of the day, if it is picking up their IPs spam did come from that IP at some point. Likely those who complain are in Internet cafes overseas where spammers like to play, which ends up getting everyone punished.

Might encourage them to find a more reliable ISP that better controls spam if that is the case.

On the other hand, if that IP has been playing nice lately, and you set a low threshold of 10 or so, it might help you and the users since that IP would be expired from results.

The email check is the most effective anyways, so simply turning off the IP check is probably best for your situation since your other registration checks seem to be strong enough for you.

Hope it helps, if not, I tried. :)

It's been over 8 hours and the submissions we tested under 1.25 are still not appearing.

I can find no record of any submission in the user logs for either of the tests we conducted ...

Regards,
Badger

Can you try it using the moderation tool to delete posts as spam and see if it ends up in the logs and SFS DV? Perhaps there is a problem with the combination of options that you are choosing when submitting from the user profile in admincp.

I did find one bug there for another reported issue where a certain combination of options just reloaded the page, that is fixed but I would like to see if we can pinpoint your issue before making another release.

I could, but I need a legitimate spammer to break through the defenses and post a thread that is spam, in order to be able to use 1.25 to delete it as spam and test it.

Will advise as soon as I have that set of circumstances ....

BTW, still no sign of the spammers I sent to StopForumSpam using the AdminCP add-on for user settings, so there must be a problem with that part of it ...

Regards,
Badger

I suggest disabling email, username and IP checks for a while so that a spammer can get on your boards otherwise we may be waiting a while for one to get through the system.

Any chance you could release the fix for the problem that I am experiencing?

I'd like to patch them both at the same time and stop development of the 1.x tree.

The first reason being is I don't want to make a new release every day for minor issues that have workarounds (this one has a workaround, which is to delete posts as spam instead of using the user option in admincp)

The second reason being this function is deprecated in version 2.0 which we are in release candidate stages for version 2.0 already. I am trying not to back-pedal too much.

In 2.0 the function in the user profile has been removed in favor of an option on the moderator tools called "Spam-O-Matic" in the postbit which will take care of everything without having to login to admincp, find the user, select the options, and ban them which is a time consuming process.

Everything is done in one step from the post itself in version 2.

I have been testing and spam info is not getting submitted through to sfs site. I have a person that registers daily that does nothing but spam peoples personal info all over the board. If I manually submit the info to the database it gets added, when I try to submit through my admincp it isn't successful. I submit and ban user no other options ticked.

I understand and believe that condition is fixed in the next release.

The workaround I see for the time being, which no one has really answered yet, is what happens when you use the "Delete Posts As Spam" option? This should take care of the user and submit them as well.

Will let you know as soon as this creep registers again I'll let him post and see what happens.

The only problem I have had since the beginning is that in the log viewer, when a post is moderated, clicking on the link for the past takes me to domain.com/admincp verus domain.com/forum/admincp, so anything you can do when clicking on that link is useless unless you manually edit the link in the browser.

Could this possibly be the issue with submittig spammers via the admincp mentioned above, maybe it is referencing the wrong URL?

I run this mod on several forums and they all have the same issue with the incorrect URL.

Oh, I guess I should add that I have never been able to submit the data via the admincp and always figured it was just because of the bad url.

1.2.6 is online. Fixes the bug with not being able to submit details to SFS from user profile in admincp.

I'm getting an error in the admin panel when I submit to SFS after updating to the newest version..


https://vborg.vbsupport.ru/external/2010/09/16.jpg

looking for help!! Ok so there was this MOD out there by a site called combatscripts.com, it was a tournament and ladder script, currently I'm using Banana's script, but this one , no offense, had a few more options I was looking for in a script..so gave it a day to look it over and now the combatscripts.com site is gone! had anyone on here heard of this site and or have any info if its gone for good or whatever, please message me back thank you! all the best...

I am not 100% positive, but I have a feeling that this is not the forum that you would want to post something about the mod you mentioned. This discussion is related to the Glowhost Spam-O-Matic mod. You may want to choose a forum from here that better suits your needs.

This is working somewhat but I am encountering the same problem others have mentioned .... it conflicts with the automatic RSS poster ... I have an ADMIN account (News) that automatically posts based on various RSS feeds ... SpamOMatic puts these threads in Moderation mode no matter what I try. The NEWS user has over 3,000 posts and my settings have the cut off at 6 posts so it should not be moderating this user.

My settings:
---------
vBulletin Spam Scanning: Disabled
Akismet: Disabled
Auto-Moderation: Enabled
Min Post Count: 6
Url Count: 0

It should be ignoring the NEWS user and it doesn't -- throws every RSS post in moderation. I've tried all variations with no luck ... any ideas? I don't want to uninstall as it really has curbed the spam registrants!!!

Iguana Goddess, I have attached a version 1.2.7 here for you to see if it fixes your issue. If it doesn't, this feature may not work for you due to the older version of vB that you are running. Still wondering if your Moderation Tools option to Delete Posts As Spam is working for you.

If the attached gets rid of those errors and works, please let me know and I will make it an official release for the 3.x series of vB.

(fingers crossed)

Thanks for the useful information. :)

Consider turning off auto-moderation for the time being and enjoy the reduced spammers on the board from the other features. I will look into why RSS is being ignored in the meantime.

No didn't work the errors are still there, thanks for trying though. I will just go back to an earlier version and manually submit which is good enough for me. It catches all the submitted spammers which makes myself and my staff members happy.

Quick question for this mod.

I know we can go in an see the log of spammers that were denied registration because something came back in akismet or stopforumspam. I have tried to help keep SFS up to date by manually submitting data from those logs, but I am giving up on that as it takes way too long.

Is there any way to add an option where all registrations that are denied automatically get submitted to SFS? The mod already has our API key, and submitting the spammer data automatically would make sure that the SFS database is updated to show that the email, ip, username, is being used right now and with whatever frequency.

In stopforumspam, we have the ability to go in and delete spammers that we submitted if we find out it was a false positive, so automatically submitting the spam data when registration is denied seems like it would be a great addition.

Just a thought, this is a great mod, my favorite and most used for sure. This mod is actually so useful, that I would have paid money to get my hands on it.

Thanks for everything.

You've been wasting your time. If the spammer is already in the rejected logs, then SFS already has them. You've been submitting duplicate information.

Installed 1.27 yesterday ...

Submitted a test case (not in their database) by manual submission to StopForumSpam site at that time ....

As of today, it still hasn't appeared ... Wouldn't it be a good idea to have feedback to the manual submitter in the log or on the screen that this action has been accepted by their site etc.?

Second observation ...

Just had my first legitimate spam poster since 1.27 installed. They made one post which appeared as moderated, so I assume your Akismet check got them as I don't have the moderate posts enabled in your in 1.27? Anyway, I selected "delete as spam" and chose to ban the user as well as delete all their posts. When I submitted it, the screen cleared and some strange black (maybe dark gray) screen flashed by, one that has a lot of text on it, however the text was dark against the dark background, so I really couldn't read it except it was an entire screen full of data (looked like a forum display maybe?).

The screen returned to a readable format and I went to check the StopForumSpam site. The name of the user I banned was immediately there as the last name in my spammers listing, so, at least this test seemed to work, but the manual one hasn't so far ..

Hope this helps ...

Regards,
Badger

Hi.. I have install it but cannot find where is it in my forum. Can u tell me where it is locate. Thanks

I suggest using delete posts as spam until version 2 comes out which is a lot slicker than this version.

As for the logs and indication of submission success, it is also in version 2.

I checked with SFS. If they are in there today, and I do not report them, then maybe tomorrow they will have been in there 11 days total (since last reported), with nobody reporting them because they are already in there.

If someone has their spam-o-matic to only go back 10 in the SFS DB, then this spammer would not have given a hit if the last submission was 11 days back (not within the 10 day window). If I had submitted them "yesterday", then they would have got a hit and I could have helped keep one spammer off someone elses site.

Not sure if that make sense, but eventually, if the spammers stop getting reported, based on how far you set the spam-o-matic to go back in the SFS DB, if they are never reported after the ifrst reporting, eventually they will not get a hit for someone. It is actually in everyone's best interest to report them even if they are already in there. This keeps their list up to date so they are still shown as "active".

Hope that made sense above.

Go to AdminCP / Settings / Options / then scroll through the list and look for Glowhost - Spam-o-matic.

You can also see the logs at AdminCP / Statistics and Logs / Glowhost-Spam-o-matic logs

By the way, if someone wants to show me this in action I might be able to find a fix for it faster if it is really an issue with Spam-O-Matic. I cannot duplicate it so if someone wants to let me login to their admincp to see the problem it might lead to an answer sooner. I need to be able to duplicate it in order to fix it.


As another member mentioned there isn't much point to that, though your followup post makes sense in relation to keeping them active on the SFS list.

However the AIM is to report people who have actually posted spam on your boards, not to report the ones that tried to register using information already found in the SFS DB. That could lead to more false positives then needed especially in regards to IP addresses.

You are welcome :) You can still pay money if you like :) A nomination for MOTM would be good, we are starting to trail in the rankings!

Its nice to see 3 important hacks combined.
Is there any chance to also get:
- minimal registration speed check
- hidden registration fields (that only bots can see)

That would make this complete.

Its possible.

I like the sound of the first one but am not sure how useful the second one would be since the spammers that code the bots are people, and they generally are going to want to see the fields that they are trying to defeat when they program their bots.

If a bot doesn't know what to put in a field, it will be bank, the same as a human who can't see the field. This might also cause accessibility problems for some people who rely on bots like screen-readers to do things for them.

Maybe I missed the concept of the second idea though.

Many vb boards have mandatory custom profile fields. Spam bots need to fill these in to register. Every board has different custom fields, so spammers have little chance to anticipate. It would be easy to add invisible fields with standard names. If you add a hidden profile field named 'Interests' then chances are that a bot will recognize this and fill it in. There used to be a addon that did this, but cant find it ATM.

Two other suggestion that would make this anti-spam suite complete are:

• Bad behaviour: http://www.bad-behavior.ioerror.us/d.../how-it-works/
• Option to disallow disposable email domains from registration. There is a list here. People can easily add the list to the email ban list, but it would be far more useful to have a centrally updated list. (doesnt need to be updated more than once every few months) And most admins do not realize the problems that disposable email addresses pose.

BTW: Many boards are getting a lot of profile spam these days. Does this addon deal with that or is that something that needs an additional solution?

Thanks for the suggestions, it would be good to have a central DB of disable emails, I agree.

This does not deal with profile spam, or blog spam at the moment. Those are planned for a later release. The primary purpose is to block registrations of known-spammers, then moderate the ones that are able to sneak past so that they never get as far as being able to spam in the first place.

Does that mean that you aim to add cookie based multiple account detection for banned accounts?

This addon works very well: Multiple Account Detection & Prevention
It seems a perfect combination with your addon. (as is vmail)

Probably not. Only people use cookies and spammers are rarely people. The other thing is people can delete cookies.

What I meant was that if they get past the blacklist checks then in the current version if they do anything "spammy" they will generally be caught by auto-moderation and moderated.

In version 2 all new members are placed in a new usergroup which has (configurable) limited permissions. If they make it past X posts they will graduate to the standard registered users group. If they do anything spammy in either group they will be moderated, until they are no longer checked for automatic moderation based on your postcount settings.

Your spammer would have to be a very persistent and bored person to make it to the registered users group and if they are that much of a pain in the butt then banning their IP from your server is always an option. I think it would be a rare day.

I do use a usergroup for new users, which they can only get out of if they receive 5 reputation points. That does work like a charm. Post count is something that spam bots seem to recognize, as they just start posting like crazy to get more than X posts. That caused me to put it the post count at 50. My staff catches them well before they can make that, as they are there around the clock.

I would expect that same about cookies, but I actually catch a very substantial number of spammers trough cookie. Happens every day.

Even after all of the above (including all of my suggestions and multiple account detection) we still get spammers, that try to circumvent the links block, in various creative ways. All these measures did get rid of 99% of all spam though, so its vital functionality for me.

To get an idea: I get 7.000 registrations attempts per month, of which 4.000 are successful and have confirmed their email and passed all spam checks. I have 3.000 banned members.

a suggestion for spammers who already are a memebe on the board, how do you preven them, you know they dont only spam by posting thread but they also spam all members on pm with the llinks so how can this mod prevent further spam

There is not much you can do about existing spammers with this mod. This mod prevents them from getting on the boards in the first place. You should probably install it now to prevent more bad guys from signing up, then start working on your existing spammers using alternative means.

here is one.

I have people / spammers registering on my forum...but afterwood disappear
into nothingness, no trace of the members name or anything...

this is what i find in spam matic log:

Venusian Arts PUA Spam-O-Matic Tagged ip - 98.64.196.143 - Spammer Found but allowed

It says it has identified the spammer, but has allowed the spammer.

So i can not find any record of the member in non-validated to registered to banned,
the member record is just no where to be found....

on another signup attempt, I get this one:

No Username Submitted Spam-O-Matic Tagged email - (email) Spammer Found but allowed.

Whats going on?