Is there any plan to port this to 3.7 ? In the interim I'm downloading the IPs and domains manually from StopForumSpam.com

v0.61 should work just fine in 3.7. I have access to someones 3.7 development board as it seems to be working great. Ive started on a specific 3.7 version that adds functionality to the user options as a tab - thats coming along nicely and I should have code out within a week, the 3.6 code isnt as easy to add.

It will have the ability to submit details to the remote site and test users details against the remote database if you think they managed to sneak past before the site was updated.

Ive got it going on 3.7.0, he hasnt pulled 3.7.1 yet as hes in the middle of fixing the templates

Just tested on 3.7.1 and it works great!

From an email I sent about recent site activity:

The number died down at 194,270 failed message delivery messages (someone sending with my domain name as the sender/reply to.

Sadly fake registrations started up again but still most are getting caught.

Question. Is it possible to auto ban users based on their email domain suffix (.cn)

I know I can prevent them from signing up with this using the out of box, but I prefer to let them continue to use a suffix I can recognize and am ok with bulk banning and then dump them in ban right away. The spammer (unless they read this post :-?) will not know why they are being banned and this will be quite a big net for me at present time.

Any suggestions?

Personally, I use the User Banning Options and block certain IP ranges / domains from there.

So, you're wanting to LET them join, and then BAN? Why?


Hey pedigree, the log only shows their username as a link if they've completed the registration process, correct?

Because right now they are using .cn domains 95% of the time so it is easy to take a swipe at good versus bad in the registrations that slip through.

If I ban .cn via vbulletin options they will not be able to register and will switch to alternate domains (this is what happened when I tried to use the Vbulletin banning) and the trend may not be as easy to spot

Today, even though the majority of the registrations are banned as soon as they sign up, they continue to use .cn domains.. my logic is that if I auto ban .cn I can make sure the large majority of attempts are caught without ever having to check an RBL or remote service.

This is all subject to the trend variation obviously.

IP addresses were much to hard of a moving target for me. I spent some time trying to amass large lists of proxies and such (thousands and thousands of addresses) and adding them every time one slipped through. A lot of effort for not much success.

I believe very much in the centralized model where a few take the pain for the many so we stop them in their tracks the first time someone reports an issue.. seems to be doing the trick so far for me!

Where are the signup logs stored and where can I view them please ?

AdminCP -> Statistics & Logs -> vbStopForumSpam Logs

Looking at the logs....

25 out of 36 signups have duplicate log entries.

Half of the entries that were successful do not have a link to their user entry in the admin cp

Duplicates in the logs is explained a couple of posts up.

Not being linked, if your configuration is anything like mine, is a result of multiple checks during registration (in my case StopForumSpam and RBL).. You will see a "Registration successful" if it made it past StopForumSpam, but if RBL caught it then there is no link.

So basically, if the user does not exit then there should not be a link to the user (easy concept I just made sound REALLY complicated I think.. heh.. )