vbStopForumSpam
 

At the point of user registration, the mod checks if the IP number / provided username / email addresses appear on a block list and can block the registration. This queries the StopForumSpam database (where I am a coder and administrator) to see if a new users IP address/email address/IP number are listed as known spammer sources.

Whilst this isnt the most perfect way to stop all forum spam, its another step that spammers have to overcome.

What it does

It checks with a remote database of known forum spammers. Their IP number, email address and forum username are tested and based on your configuration, you can reject / log / accept user registrations based on what you get back.

This version doesnt have
- whitelisting or the ability to submit users to the database but it will within the next week.
- automatic user deletion / post / PM purging. There are good tools out there already, this does something else.

Currently, I would say this is an beta codebase. Please treat it as such.

Instructions are included in the installation.txt file - PLEASE read it first and dont forget to actually upload the files in the upload folder, otherwise it WILL kill your registration progress and you wont see the log file options in admincp.

This is the exact same version that is on the 3.6 forums because it works with 3.54 to 3.84 (at time of wriing, the latest version)

Changes to vB
- 3 new database tables
- 2 database table alternations
- No new templates.
- 2 Hook (register_addmember_process & register_addmember_complete)

Known to work - tested by me
- vBulletin 3.6.8 on Apache 2.2 / PHP 5.1.2 on Linux using cUrl
- vBulletin 3.7 Gold on Apache 2.0 / PHP 4.4.3 on Windows without cUrl (template changes wont work on 3.7 - thats in the next version with auto template changes)

For code to submit spammers to the database, check this post for code changes
https://vborg.vbsupport.ru/showp...&postcount=288

Reported in the thread to work
- 3.5.4 3.6.1, 3.6.2, 3.6.9, 3.6.10, 3.7.0, 3.7.1, 3.7.2, 3.7.3, 3.74, 3.80, 3.81, 3.82, 3.83, 3.8.4

Installers should remember to refresh their ACP navigation window when they first install it so they can see the new log file menu item.

REQUIRES MySQL 4.1.1+

If you want to submit data directly from the user admincp to the database, then you can install an addon mod (Coded by Wired1) here https://vborg.vbsupport.ru/showpost....&postcount=288

You need to have an API key from www.stopforumspam.com in order to submit data, its free and easy to get... The code above is a quick hack that changes the pages "form" so that it submits to the database. As its a quick hack, this relies 100% on javascript being enabled and makes no tests that it is enabled.

Please click Installed

This is an exact copy of the 3.6 mod as Ive been nagged to near suicide (joking really, I think) from people saying "Why isnt this listed in the 3.8 mods section"

- So now it is.

This should remove any issues with people not installing it because they didnt read the 3.6 mod stating it works from 3.5.4 and might highlight its existance and thus, userbase.

Please read the original 3.6 mod thread at

https://vborg.vbsupport.ru/showthread.php?t=176481

This is where the majority of the answers and replies are. Anything posted in the 3.8 mod section (until 0.7 is release) will be addressed in the original thread. This is to avoid splitting responses.

are there any code changes to do since 3.6.1, i know there are lots, i use this mod currently for 3.8.4 but codes need updating

Nope, exactly the same. 0.61 was 0.60 with a tiny change and 0.60 didnt last very long at all. The mod in admincp still says 0.6 but is 0.61, which is what is posted here.

An excellent mod! Every board should use this full-featured modification if they wish to curtail spam. It includes a panel in the Admincp for reporting new spammers back to the StopForumSpam.com database so that other boards won't get plagued, too. Also, it allows for blocking spammers based on 3 different criteria: their usernames they select, their email addresses, and/or their IP addresses.

Pedigree: Someone on the lite mod asked if there's a way to query existing members: (https://vborg.vbsupport.ru/showpost....1&postcount=48). Would you have any plans for somthing which allows an admin to scour the local database for hits?

I have and will but not a task to be run lightly. If you have , say, 2000 members and you want to check them all, thats 2000 (minimum) remove queries. As we only allow 5000 per day, thats a good slice is a daily allocation. What I might do uis build it around the daily downloadable (5am EST I think) CSV file. This would allow for every detail to be checked - registration ip, last activity ip, username, email address

Following the installation instructions gives "Invalid File Specified" when I try to import it. Any ideas?

W

When you import the XML file?

how about some information, like what file youre importing and what version of vbulletin youre using

So to update from the 3.6 version we can just import the next XML file?

What I did for the time being was to export the entire Users table in the PHPmyAdmin product as a CSV file, deleted all the unimportant fields, then I designed a form in VB.NET to open the exported CSV file, parse it line by line and add the contents into a listbox, and then roll through the listbox, serially building a URL string with all 3 parameters as you had showed us, and parse the returned pages for the markers on whether they were identified as spammers. Since our board has only 500 members it went well.

Just import the XML file in the zip file after uploading the contents of the "Upload" folder to the root of your forum

It would be nice to have a feature to search for already registered users for spammers like if i installed vbstopforumspam it would search for everyone that was already register to see if their emails/IP's show up in the stopforumspam database.

<a href="https://www.stopforumspam.com" target="_blank">www.stopforumspam.com</a> XML response is giving errors for the non spammers....
<response success=" <type>ip</type>
<appears>no</appears>
<frequency>0</frequency>
</response>

Should be

<response success="false">
<type>ip</type>
<appears>no</appears>
<frequency>0</frequency>
</response>

And I cant contact them!

You just did, Ill pull the source code and look at this.

Edit : Just fixed it. Im not sure who editted that api file in the SVN but its fixed now.

I just installed a clean 3.8.4 and imported the plugin (once I enabled plugins) and it installed with no issues at all.

just installed. i'm excited about this. we have a pretty high traffic board and get maybe one new spammer a day. they go right past capatcha and projecthoneypot. obviously user assisted. we manually check all new users against stopforumspam and i was getting ready to write the new 3.8 code but lucky stumbled on to this.

we'll keep a close eye on the logs and do some testing. i hope this adds another layer for them to battle. we might not be able to stop them but we can make it pretty damn difficult and annoying to get at us. lol

thank you for this. we'll give an update in a week and let you know how it goes for us.

This has been working fine so far. One more thing I've done is to delete the "Welcome to our newest member" line from the index page. I see no reason to reward a spammer for registering.

Good idea; it does usually say something like "Welcome to our newest member: nFRRserfa2Dfhkjj3." because the ratio of spammers to non-vampires is at least 4 to 1. :)

Thanks for the prompt fix! :up: We had some people not able to join :(

The work around was to set...
"Query Connection Errors / What should happen if the remote connection times out when querying the new registration?" to "Allow Registration" :cool:

We love SFS!! It has cut our mods workload!

Forum: www.ausphotography.net.au

Got an SQL Database error message not mentioned in installation.txt.

Specific message emailed me from my vBulletin server:

Database error in vBulletin 3.8.4:

Invalid SQL:
ALTER TABLE usergroup ADD vbstopforumspamviewpermissions INT( 10 ) UNSIGNED DEFAULT '0' NOT NULL;

MySQL Error : Duplicate column name 'vbstopforumspamviewpermissions'
Error Number : 1060
Request Date : Tuesday, September 8th 2009 @ 08:32:31 PM
Error Date : Tuesday, September 8th 2009 @ 08:32:32 PM
Script : http:// www.myurl.com/forums/admincp/plugin.php?do=productimport
Referrer : http:// www.myurl.com/forums/admincp/plugin.php?do=productadd
IP Address : 71.212.191.241
Username : admin
Classname : vB_Database_MySQLi
MySQL Version : 5.1.30

Sorry. I am not conversant with SQL. Is this something I need to "worry" about?

Thanks for your help and thanks for what I hope will turn out to be a great mod!

John

first off thank you very much for this plugin it works very very well.

Can i ask for an addition to this so when you delete posts as spam then there is an option to report someone as a spammer

or just a user profile option which allows to report as a spammer to stop forum spam.

Some easy way to add them to the stop forum spam DB easily from within the control panel of the forum.

brightflash it looks like you reinstalled it without first uninstalling it. Uninstall it and then reinstall it. Failing that, then you will need to edit that table in phpMyAdmin and drop that column from the table before reinstalling.

Failing that, drop me a PM and Ill knock you up a forced removal XML file that you can import to uninstall and cleanup so that you can import it again.

Sure, I can add that. I have been granted permission from the brother of the guy who wrote "1 click spam cleanup" to use some of his code. This mod-extra will ban a users, delete his PM/posts/threads and submit his details to the database (if the mod/supermod has been granted permissions to do so of course) This is mostly included in the 0.7 source that Im poking and prodding away at, at the moment

Thanks for the work-around!

Weird!

I had never installed it before.

I'm starting to wonder what's going on with my computer. Here it double-posted my post yesterday. It double-installed vbStopForumSpam . . . (!!!)

Again, thank you.

John

The stopforumspam.com domain is down at the moment as the site owner forgot to renew the domain. Ive tried to contact him and just hope that hes reading his emails this morning.

Sorry, yes, when I import the XML file into 3.8.4 after the upload had already been done. I tried importing the xml both from my local machine and from the server.

W

Edit: Got it to load by downloading the product xml from the old thread.

Installed and working perfect, thanks.

I'm new to all of this and have only had my forum up and running for just over a month now. There have been 22 spammers rejected in the last 4 days, not sure if this amount of spammers is the norm for new forums or, I'm doing something wrong lol

Chances are it's the same bot using different details, (Comment Spammer)
You arent doing anything wrong, They are just persistant littls sob's.
After awhile they will move on,
But not to worry, There will be others on the way, They are like roaches, Once they arrive they just multiply lol
I had the same problem not too long ago.
They have slowed down a bit but will always continue to annoy us for some reason.

Be thankful some Great mods are coming out to help combat them.

im getting 20+ spammers mainly from russia trying to register to my site a day, i have "aproove new sign ups" ON so i can catch them there BUT if this plug in can stop all this then thumbs up. Ill give it a go and report back

Hi pedigree,

Nice mod you made here, not installed it at the moment but I do have a few questions

1. What happens if www.stopforumspam.com goes offline, does it just hang in the user browser or is there a timeout then continue with registering the user?

2. Is there a way to test it working?

3. If I was to uninstall it for whatever reason will it go back to default?

1) It will allow all the registrations access. It won't just hang the attempted registrations.

2) Go to your Logs part of the AdminCP and click the StopForumSpam Log and you will be able to see all the people it has declined and the reason it has done so. On my forum, within about 5 minutes of it being installed, it already had 8-10 spammers/bots on the list for denial of registration.

3) Yes

What I find odd is the large number of spammers who do successfully register, but who never go to their email to click on and complete the registration process. It's as if they are doing it just to see if the server allows for a new registration of an old spammer account, and if it allows them to register then they just move on because they are using the registration process as a way to check for the presence of an unlocked spammer account without the pitfalls of using the login page.

Do I really need to recompile php 5.2.11 with cUrl extension to make this hack working?
If YES, does enough or we need also?

Hi,

Would just like to say I have installed this mod and it is fantastic thank you very much.

I have one small question - In vB Options under Spam Managment it asks you to select which anti spam service to use and gives an option of two - "Akismet" and "Typepad AntiSpam Beta" - which option am I supposed to select?

Thank you again :)

Awesome app I have it installed and it is blocking a ton of spammers each day.


I am seeing the same thing on my boards. Some spammers will make it past but never activate there account. very odd

I see this type of thing on my blog regularly. I think the important thing to remember is that you're dealing with software more than a human. The spamming software that the person is using is not complete enough to log into whatever free email system they're using, open the mail and click on the link.

I have a board with about 31k users, and we get about one new spammer / spambot attempt a day. My mods are agrieved over having to deal with this on a daily basis. We're probably going to give this mod a shot. If it is very good, we'd consider an annual donation to keep this alive.

Thank you very much to those involved in maintaining this modification :up::up::up:

Rob

I installed this app. It stopped spam but now when any new members try to register the get a database error and can not register after they click "agree to terms". Any help?

This is a superb mod... Thank you so much for creating it. We have a small membership (about 1500) but just lately we've been getting spm bots join and trying to post. We have Resync in place but they are getting past that.
I suppose we've kicked out about 10 a day at the moment.
I've also applied the API key to share the info with the Stop Spam Forum.