Hey all.

We've been getting some new spammers registering - no worries, their IP/email/username doesn't appear in the database.

Now they're not posting threads/posts, but are adding user notes to their own profile with links to spam sites. (gambling, etc). These notes are getting moderated into a queue, but I cannot find an option to report them via the Spam-O-Matic links.

To date we're just banning or deleting the users which are doing this - but any help so we can assist in improving the database would be welcome.

Thanks!
Martin

G'day Phaedrus - Thanks for the reply. Please don't get me wrong and I'm not trying to be rude, but that really does sound a bit suspect to me. :rolleyes: I'll admit it is possible if there's a timeout setting. But that's not very reassuring when one is relying on a fix that doesn't appear to work as it should.

But maybe this timeout setting is the reason why only 15 Spammers Denied Registration for an entire 5 day period when prior to that there were approx 250 per day, (that's1,250 for the same time period) or maybe the spammers have just stopped trying. Certainly haven't on my other forum where we are still running at around 250-300 per day being denied access using vbStopForumSpam and we have never had a problem with anyone ever getting back in with the same IP after banning them via SFS.

I fear there may be a serious problem or at least a better explanation than a timeout, especially with the dramatic drop on denied registrations.

Still looking for an answer to Question 2 above in the original post.

Cheers - Neil :D

I have legit users that are being denied registration using a hotmail account. How come? How can I allow them to register?

1) Because the orginal mod did not count correctly. This has been answered in this thread many times. SOM counts only the users who manage to get past vBulletin's built in registration form. The original mod checked the users before they tried to register on the built in vB form.

There is no reason to waste resources and connections to SFS by checking every bot that may not even get past the built-in vB validation.

2) They end up in the moderated posts as every other moderated thread would. If you are not seeing them then there is an unreported bug or you have another mod which is playing games, or your vB install is corrupt.

You can change the setting to disallow registration.

Thank you for that. Greatly appreciated and makes sense. However.....

I have banned all moderators and administrators from moderating threads/posts etc to make sure no one is sneaking in and approving, deleting anything from the Moderated thread/post section. Since that time there have been according to the notice on the forum home page 75 Spammy Posts Automatically Moderated (9 more than when I posted originally) but only 2 have gone into the Moderation section leaving 7 more mysteries that have never been seen by us and they join the rest that are lost somewhere.

I have been able to find the moderated posts in the GlowHost - Spam-O-Matic Log Viewer but haven't been able to moderate them as the bulk of them just don't show anywhere other than in that viewer and the links go to an empty Moderation box.

Also on the forum homepage the only stats from SOM are:

Spam-O-Matic StatisticsSpam-O-Matic Statistics

23 Spammers Denied Registration

75 Spammy Posts Automatically Moderated (to date we've only found around 12 of them

We were running v4.1.2 and have updated to v4.1.3 but nothing has changed. vB instalation is not corrupt.

Other mods installed and running are:
Skimlinks Plugin 2.0.7
Tab And Link Manager 4 4.2.0
vBulletin Blog 4.1.3
vBulletin CMS 4.1.3
vBSEO 3.5.2

Cheers - Neil :D

Does anyone else have this problem?

I can't duplicate it on our boards. I don't run any of the mods you have nor blog or CMS.

I would venture to say that maybe vBSEO 3.5.2, or Skimlinks Plugin 2.0.7, are what might be causing some of it.

Guys I get email every day now from people who can't register. I'll have to uninstall if I can't figure this out. Please help.

The one thing I can maybe help with a little.

Taking name recognition off may help, as there are many many people with the same username around the world and just because one is reported, doesn't tar them all with the same brush. We have something like 20 odd Robbo's registered on one of our forums alone, all with variations of the name but you can bet they nearly all tried plain old Robbo to begin with.

Hope this is of some help.

Will disable everything for a few days and see what happens then slowly reintroduce them one at a time over a week or so and see what happens.

Cheers - Neil :D