Administrative and Maintenance Tools - 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

[rasp187]

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

[segwayon]

Originally Posted by pedigree

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

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.

[pedigree]

Originally Posted by rasp187

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

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

[xjuliox]

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.

[AusPhotography]

<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!

[pedigree]

Originally Posted by snoopytas

www.stopforumspam.com 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.

[pedigree]

Originally Posted by wmelnick

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

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

[testbot]

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.

[Expat]

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.

[segwayon]

Originally Posted by Expat

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.