Anti-Spam Options - [GlowHost] Spam-O-Matic - Spam Firewall stops forum spam

If you install this mod, please mark this as "Installed."

VERSION 2.1.2 RELEASED 5/28/2013!


About Spam-O-Matic 2.x:
Spam-O-Matic 2.x (SOM) is a spam firewall for your vBulletin Forums version 4.x and later. It prevents known spammers from registering on your forums. If they can't register, they can't spam!

Languages Packs Available
English
German - Courtesy of Alex@bulletin (included in zip)
Romanian - Courtesy of Teascu Dorin's (included in zip)
Spanish - Courtesy of vbluis (included in zip)

How it Works
This data responsible for blocking user registrations comes from the stopforumspam.com (SFS) spammer database. After the user who is trying to register passes the built-in vBulletin registration checks which you have configured in your vBulletin settings, SOM then checks the SFS database to see if the IP, username, or email address that the user is trying to register with has been recently tagged as a known spam source on other forums around the Internet. Also can be configured to check the Akismet service for known comment spam.

This is without a doubt, one of the most important mods that you will be using on your forum.

Other Notable Stuff
It also does a ton of other cool stuff like moderating posts automatically if the post is found in the Akismet database, or if it contains words on your "Bad Words" keyword list which can be configured within the mod itself.

The mod WORKS with vBulletin's new Facebook integration.
This module works with all of the Facebook functions that are built into the vB4 series.
Similar mods do not handle Facebook integration completely.

This module has the ability to submit new spammer details to the StopForumSpam or Akismet databases automatically, all without any new templates or manual template modifications! :up:

This means other forums that are running Spam-O-Matic will not have the same spammer on their forums if you have (automatically) reported the spammer to the SFS database.

Just install the product in the product manager, upload a few files, configure the system and you are done. (Estimated time: 5-10 minutes)

What's new in 2.1.0:

• Fixed a problem with MySQL engine selection to make mod more compatible with different types of servers.
• When SOM "Newbies Group" is activated + vB's native option to "Verify Email address in Registration" is activated at the same time, "Users Awaiting Email Confirmation" must click the verification link to become a newbie.
• Added remove user, post, ban to user profile options in admincp under "Quick User Links"
• Added German Language Pack
• Optimized default settings to work with the needs of most forums
• Added a new coupon for GlowHost (available after you submit a spammer)
• Several other performance tuning options

Feature List:

• Optional Public Statistics. Show off to the world how many bad guys you have automatically prevented from posting junk on your forum.
• Auto-Moderation moderates posts that have links, bad words, and other configurable settings.
• Auto-Moderation ignores your RSS posts.
• Registration / Denial Logs available from Admincp > Statistics and Logs
• Optional "Newbies" Manager! After registration, newly registered users can be placed in a "Newbies" group which has more limited permissions as compared to your regular "Registered Users" group. Newbies will graduate to your Registered Users group based on your required post count settings.
• Auto-Submit Spammers from the moderation tools menu on each postbit.
• Remove Posts, threads, PMs, Calendar Events from your spammer in one easy wizard. No double logins needed.
• Shows other users who signed up with the same IP. (Sleeping Spammers)
• Optional Affiliate System
• ~50 customizable settings to fine-tune Spam-O-Matic to your exact needs.

A) StopForumSpam:
The StopForumSpam Module lets you:

• Check a registrant's IP address.
• Check a registrant's email address.
• Check a registrants Username.
• Disable or enable any of the above checks.
• Block and log, or, allow and log known spammers.
• All registration attempts are logged for your viewing pleasure.
• Several other performance tuning options

If a user (or bot) tries to register on your forum and they pass the built-in vBulletin registration system. (Human verification, email verification, etc), their registration details are then passed to the Spam-O-Matic firewall for further checking.

NOTE: You should use some sort of human verification checking in vBulletin's built-in options to limit the number of requests to the already heavily-loaded StopForumSpam database servers. This will also prevent additional load because SOM will not have to do anything if the bot/spammer fails preliminary registration validation which is built-into vBulletin itself.

It is completely invisible to humans who are registering that this process is taking place. Bots are stopped dead in their tracks.

If a spammer is able to sneak past the first line of defense, and manages to post, then there are secondary, tertiary, and, uh...4th level protections too!

B) Auto-Moderation:
Auto Moderation lets you:

• Define how many URLs a new member can post before being sent to moderation.
• Define keywords that will send a post to Auto-moderation (viagra, porn, more here)
• Define minimum post count to avoid Auto-moderation.
• Excludes admin and moderators from Auto-moderation.
• Completely disable Auto-moderation if you don't want it.

C) Akismet Service
Spammers that make it past the StopForumSpam and Auto-Moderation will be checked against the Akismet service. If they manage to make a post, and then are found on Akismet, they can be auto-moderated.

The Akismet settings let you:

• Set the number of posts that Akismet will check from each user. After this number is exceeded, Akismet checking will be disabled for that user.
• Auto-Submit spammers that post on your boards back to the Akismet service so that other forums and blogs do not do not receive the same spam.
• Completely disable the Akismet service.

D) Newbies Manager
Should you decide to enable this option, you can create a new usergroup and then tell Spam-O-Matic about it. Once SOM knows about this usergroup, and once enabled, all new users will be part of the Newbies group. The idea here is that you make a Newbies group that has limited forum permissions. For example, no signatures, no BB code, no images, and etc. This group is created completely in the vB admincp. Spam-O-Matic simply makes it the graduation process to the normal Registered Users group, automatic.
Learn More and Discuss the Newbies Manager here.

Punitive Actions:
If you find a spammer has made it past your 4 front-lines of defense, and has managed to post on your forum, then you can help the community...

The spammer's details can be sent to the Stop Forum Spam and Akismet databases automatically, preventing them from registering or posting on other forums. When other forums do the same, the protection is reciprocated.

Simply moderate a post and choose the option to "Delete Posts As Spam..." an then choose the option to "Ban User." Banning the user sends their details to either Akismet, StopForumSpam, (or both) depending on how you set it up.

API Keys:
API Keys are not required for this system to stop spammers on your forums. But you should obtain them so that your forum can contribute to the real-time block lists.

A StopForumSpam API key is required if you want to contribute to the StopForumSpam blacklists by adding your spammers to their database. By submitting spammers you help keep other forums and blogs clean.

An Akismet API key is required if you want to enable any Akismet auto-moderation features in this module. Akismet API key is not required for all Auto-Moderation functions.

You can obtain a Stop Forum Spam API key which is free from stopforumspam.com.

Get your StopForumSpam API Key Here

You can obtain an Akismet API key from Akismet.com.
Akismet offers free and paid API keys so choose your version based on your situation.

Get your Akismet API Key Here

Why it is better than the other anti-spam solutions on vBulletin.org:

• Works with all of vBulletin 4 functions including Facebook automatic registration.
• Report spammers that you find to the Stop Forum Spam Database.
• Report spammers that you find to the Akismet Database.
• Built-in Auto-moderation.
• Auto-moderation rules based on post count.
• Auto-moderation rules based keywords.
• Auto-moderation rules based Akismet results.
• Enable or disable any actions that you do not want.
• Customizable "Registration Rejected" message.
• Consolidates 4 popular methods of spam prevention into one product.
• No Manual Template Modifications!
• Lots of community support!

======================
Compatibility:
vBulletin 4.0.x

Server Requirements:
Curl or allow_url_fopen must be compiled/enabled into PHP. Ask your web host to enable curl or allow_url_fopen if it is not already available on your server's PHP configuration. (Or just host with GlowHost.com, where it already is

=====================
Donations:

If you like this mod, sure, you can donate!

Donations can be all sorts of things:
1) The "Give Thanks" option in your settings is an optional link back to GlowHost Web Hosting.
2) Tell your friends and others about this mod.
3) If you are in need of web hosting, please consider ordering it from the hosting and development professionals at GlowHost.com who were able to develop this mod to you.
4) Help others who are having trouble with this mod by posting tips and suggestions in this forum thread.
5) Cash! Use the "Support Developer" option on the top right of this page.

When you choose to donate, you are contributing to the product development, bug fixes and new releases for SOM and are helping to feed our hungry developers and their families! In other words, your donations helps to cover the time and money spent to develop this system.

The entire team at GlowHost thanks you for your help and support!

We hope you enjoy the mod! :up:

=====================
Installation:

1) Download the attached file
2) Mark As Installed
3) SOM 2.x does not support updates from the v1.x series.
When upgrading to version 2.x, please, be sure to remove any other existing version of SOM 1.x from the product manager before installing v2.x series. Also make sure to remove /forum/includes/xml/bitfield_glowhostspamomatic.xml from version 1 if you had it installed.

4) Extract the zip file, and view the readme file for the rest of the instructions.

=====================

Original concept credits go to the authors of vBStopForumSpam, MonkeyStop.

[BadgerDog]

Originally Posted by GlowHost.com

Actually, if you want know the truth, I didn't even realize vB4 had any sort of Anti-Spam settings. Those controls are nice, but they lack a lot of important things...

I will investigate and see if they conflict or cause problems however.

In the meantime, if you would like to have the features of this mod, you should pretend the built-in vB spam options never existed, and just disable it....or, use the following defaults:

If you forgot what those were:
Anti-Spam Service: Disabled
vBulletin Anti-Spam Key: Blank
Spam Scanning Post Threshold: 0
Anti-Spam Data Storage Length (Days): 7

Whatever settings you have there are probably fine, even if enabled, but they are not tested with this mod so the straight answer is to keep the defaults or disable that section, and configure this mod as you see fit for your forums.

Interesting ...

Thanks for the update ....

Akismet direct support etc were added new in VB4 as options ...

Not knowing what you said above, we left VB's services ON and have been running them side by side after installing your mod, so far without a problem. Perhaps we'll leave then ON for now and see if there's any obvious conflicts and post here if we observe any.

Thanks again for your work... nice integration .... would love to see a ONE BUTTON option similar to mfyvie's old 3.6 One-touch Spam Ban and Cleanup. When trying to deal with spammers on a PDA or iPhone sitting in an airport, that one button approach in the spammer's profile that banned him, removed all his messages permanently and sent reports to stopforumspam database (with an optional add-on) was excellent. So, if you ever think about additional options, we'd sure appreciate that one. :up:

Regards,
Badger

[giorgino]

Take a look here. One spammer first rejected, after allowed with same banned IP

[BadgerDog]

Getting some odd behavior ....

Since installing this mod, I've found automated posts from two names that we use for posting information about classified ads (uses RSS function) and multiple user logins, are having their posts placed in moderation, which never happened before.

Both these users belong to the Admin user group and the only thing they have in common is their posts are generated automatically by either the RSS funciton in vBulletin 4 or by an add-on mod which creates a post in a forum advising moderators about people who are attempting duplicate logins and registrations.

Not sure why this mod would cause this, but perhaps it has something to do with the fact we're still running vBulletin's Akismet function in tandem with this mod? With just vBulletin's Akismet check running, we don't get this problem...

Regards,
Badger

[Gemma]

Originally Posted by BadgerDog

Getting some odd behavior ....

Since installing this mod, I've found automated posts from two names that we use for posting information about classified ads (uses RSS function) and multiple user logins, are having their posts placed in moderation, which never happened before.

Both these users belong to the Admin user group and the only thing they have in common is their posts are generated automatically by either the RSS funciton in vBulletin 4 or by an add-on mod which creates a post in a forum advising moderators about people who are attempting duplicate logins and registrations.

Not sure why this mod would cause this, but perhaps it has something to do with the fact we're still running vBulletin's Akismet function in tandem with this mod? With just vBulletin's Akismet check running, we don't get this problem...

Regards,
Badger

Yeah I've just noticed that aswell. I was trying to figure out why my RSS feeds weren't posting :erm:

[BadgerDog]

Originally Posted by Gemma

Yeah I've just noticed that aswell. I was trying to figure out why my RSS feeds weren't posting :erm:

Yup ..

I've been looking at this further and this mod is definitely placing automated posts by Admins using both RSS and other mods into the moderation queue...

I wonder if there's a way to disable the "auto moderation" function in this mod, as we're not using it anyway, of course, assuming that it's the element of the mod causing the problem.

Regards,
Badger

[GlowHost.com]

Originally Posted by BadgerDog

Akismet direct support etc were added new in VB4 as options ...

Not knowing what you said above, we left VB's services ON and have been running them side by side after installing your mod, so far without a problem. Perhaps we'll leave then ON for now and see if there's any obvious conflicts and post here if we observe any.

Not sure how that will work, our forums have the default vB stuff turned off and only run this mod. Seems like the built-in functions our similar but maybe a little less robust.

Originally Posted by BadgerDog

Thanks again for your work... nice integration .... would love to see a ONE BUTTON option similar to mfyvie's old 3.6 One-touch Spam Ban and Cleanup. When trying to deal with spammers on a PDA or iPhone sitting in an airport, that one button approach in the spammer's profile that banned him, removed all his messages permanently and sent reports to stopforumspam database (with an optional add-on) was excellent. So, if you ever think about additional options, we'd sure appreciate that one. :up:

Yes I would like to see that too and it is planned for a later version when we can figure out how to get it doen without manual template modifications.

[GlowHost.com]

Giorgino, for the sometimes strange log-entries, we are looking into that.

Regarding RSS feeds being moderated, it shouldn't moderate them unless your RSS user does not have more than what you have configured in "Auto-Moderation: Minimum Post Count"

Are you saying your RSS user has more posts than the configured value and is also ADMIN and it is being moderated?

Yes, you could disable auto-moderation by setting the post count to 0.

[BadgerDog]

Originally Posted by GlowHost.com

Are you saying your RSS user has more posts than the configured value and is also ADMIN and it is being moderated?

In our case, yes... our RSS Poster name "Quartermaster Stores" has 120 posts and is classified as a usergroup Admin, yet it keeps putting that username's posts into the moderation queue. Also, our "Admin" username that auto posts in a mod forum inappropriate multiple logins has 18 posts and it puts his posts into the moderation queue as well.

Originally Posted by GlowHost.com

Yes, you could disable auto-moderation by setting the post count to 0.

I will try that ...

Note: Just has a regular registered member (18 posts) have one of his posts placed in moderation queue and I've never seen that before. We had the Akismet setting (vBulletin's version) at 1, which according to their instructions means that shouldn't happen with their version. As I said, it never did previous to testing this mod. Let me set your auto-moderation to 0 and see what happens.

This setting controls how many of a user's posts will be scanned by the Anti-Spam Service. Once a user's post count exceeds this threshold, his or her posts will not be scanned for spam content. To always scan posts set this value to 0.

Regards,
Badger

Edit: Just checked and your auto-moderation count for URL's was already set to 0, but it still stopped the user with 18 posts? It's worth noting that user had 5 links to external images in his post that got moderated. The Auto-Moderation: Minimum Post Count was set to 1, so I just changed that one to 0. Does this help at all?

[GlowHost.com]

Regarding your RSS, is that done through some plugin or is that done using vB's built in RSS?

As for auto-moderation of your guy with 18 posts, that may be a conflict with running vBs Akismet service in tandem with Spam_O-Matic which I don't recommend trying as it has not been tested.

This module was meant to run standalone from any other anti-spam.

Is there some reason to run both that I am not seeing?

[BadgerDog]

Originally Posted by GlowHost.com

Regarding your RSS, is that done through some plugin or is that done using vB's built in RSS?

As for auto-moderation of your guy with 18 posts, that may be a conflict with running vBs Akismet service in tandem with Spam_O-Matic which I don't recommend trying as it has not been tested.

This module was meant to run standalone from any other anti-spam.

Is there some reason to run both that I am not seeing?

It's vBulletin's standard RSS built into v4.0.4pl1. It's reading a standard v2 RSS feed and creating a post in a forum, using an Admin account.

After resetting your "Auto-Moderation: Minimum Post Count" which was set to 1 to 0, I note that a recent auto RSS post by the same Admin account posted successfully without being placed in moderation. Can I assume that's because by changing it to 0, the auto moderation function is now disabled?

Thanks for your help ...

Regards,
Badger