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.

[Joey805]

Do you have a version 2.0 for VB3?

[GlowHost.com]

Originally Posted by owning_y0u

Can you please tell me why the submit function in de admin cp profile editor has been removed?

P.s. Askimet and Stopforumspam API are filled in correctly
p.s.1 asked this question earlier but never received the answer

Originally Posted by PossumX

I echo this. That function was perfect to deal with new registrants who simply signed up (got through the mod) and were either sleepers, or homepage stuffers.

Its been removed because there were too many conflicts and we wanted to get version 2 released. If there are enough requests for it we can look in to re-enabling it.

Originally Posted by Joey805

Do you have a version 2.0 for VB3?

Version 2 will only work on vB 4 and up.

[fxs158]

Ok I am conffused, I have the software installed, it shows that it has blocked many people, however the owner of this ip 216.80.120.75 just registered and it is a registered user. The spam forum shows the owner of the ip as a spammer, how did they get arround the software?

http://www.stopforumspam.com/ipcheck/216.80.120.75

[GlowHost.com]

Maybe they were not yet on the ban list when they registerred on your forum. The timestamp on their site says it was only added on 13-Feb-11 08:39 PM which was a few minutes ago. Or he wasn't there at all and you are the one that added him.

[fxs158]

So in that case then it is up to me to manually ban him? I love the software! Is there a way to run the spam list from the stopforumspam site against my database to get rid of all teh spammers that got in prior to the software being installed?

[TeknoSounds]

sometimes you could be the first person to submit the spammer's info. Think of it as blocking it for everyone else down the road

[GlowHost.com]

Originally Posted by fxs158

So in that case then it is up to me to manually ban him?

When you have SOM setup correctly and choose the ban option you will ban him from not only your forums but you will add his details to the SFS database so that he can't spam on other people's boards.

Originally Posted by fxs158

I love the software!

Thanks

Originally Posted by fxs158

Is there a way to run the spam list from the stopforumspam site against my database to get rid of all teh spammers that got in prior to the software being installed?

No, you cant run it on existing users it would be a problem for the SFS website if large forums suddenly started submitting thousands of member IPs, emails and usernames at the same time. You would need to have a cron setup to submit small numbers of IPs in batches to their database and that maight take years to complete on a large board.

On smaller boards its probably beyond the technical ability of many users to setup the cron so its a bit beyond the scope of this mod to try to do that. I think the support would be too intense for free product so its probably not going to be implemented. Not to mention if it was setup wrong your board would be banned by SFS so that would be a bad thing.

[fxs158]

Originally Posted by GlowHost.com

When you have SOM setup correctly and choose the ban option you will ban him from not only your forums but you will add his details to the SFS database so that he can't spam on other people's boards.

Ok I think I have it set up correctly, so let me rephrase the question. If I am the first one reporting a spammer, in my case it as reported but after he was registered on the forum. So in the rare occasion that I am the first reporting a spammer, do I have to delete the spammer manually? Or did I miss configure something? Currently the software has been rejecting allot of spammers, so not sure what I need to do differently.

One other question, I added another hack that simply will ask questions upon registration in addition to the re-capcha. So I decided to test it to make sure than people are able to register. I used the bogus user name and a common email. I forgot about this hack and sure enough it flagged me as a spammer. Will my ip now be listed on the database of spammers?

[GlowHost.com]

You will need to look carefully at your SOM settings in the "Easy Cleanup" section and tell it to do what you want it to do with your users (delete or ban) when you run the SOM wizard from the moderation tools menu.

Will you be listed as a spammer, no, not unless you were able to register on your own forum and then you ran SOM which submits your details. The same way you submitted the last guy to their database...

[maokaang]

Originally Posted by Palehorse74480

It is a myth that Q an A stops them.

I have to disagree. S-O-M version 1.x was blocking and logging 100+ spammers a day on our forums. That turns out to have been quite unnecessary. I believe version 2 employs a far more logical and practical approach by running only after vbulletin's human verification procedures have been passed.

After 1 week of use, the number of spammers logged/blocked by S-O-M on our site is ZERO. Only approvals and auto-moderation (keywords) have been logged so far. The website owners at SFS must be breathing a great sigh of relief; their database isn't taking the unnecessary beating version 1 was giving it.

Not one spammer has slipped through our Q&A these last 7 days, quite obviously far from the myth you proclaim it. I have no doubt our ZERO figure won't last very long though, someone/something will get through soon, and for that I am most grateful to have S-O-M there as a second line of defence. To be sure, I ran a test registration using a known spam email address recorded at SFS, answered the Q&A, and S-O-M blocked and logged me.

Version 1 proved it clearly works. Now, I'm glad to say, it only works when it's really needed.

Many thanks GlowHost for an excellent mod made even better. :up: