PM Spam

[mtrac]

Running 3.7 and have suffered two bouts of Buddhist PM spam. Because PM is sometimes the only way I have to communicate with my members, I allow even unconfirmed ones access to it.

Would like to know ways to throttle members, particularly bots, without interfering with legitimate use. Yes, I know this has been discussed frequently, but I couldn't find a good solution. I'm this close either to redirecting any PM entry with a variant of "Buddha" in the text to Wikipedia or sending a 403 header.

Address of my latest spammer: jessie456@yepmail.net

[aeturner89]

Try using Question and Answer verification.

[mtrac]

I created a plugin with the private_insertpm_process hook. One of these days I'll check how many PM's the member has sent recently and how many posts they have.

PHP Code:

if (preg_match('/buddh/i', $vbulletin->GPC['message']))
eval(standard_error(fetch_error('pm_turnedoff'))); 


[rant boss]

I just got hit for the second time by this garbage....any updates on how to prevent it? I have visual verification set to prevent bots from signing up...but this thing (or person) is persistent...sent a PM every 2 minutes (I set PM flood control to 120 secs) to a different user for over 8 hours until I caught it.

ps: the scumbag's email addy is james420@123mail.org

[TheInsaneManiac]

Use the X amount of posts before PM, or X amount of posts before URL.