A trick to send spammers to hell (or anywhere you want!)

[edward hamilton]

Thanks I'm definitely going to try it again tonight. This makes so much more sense than the other approaches.

I didn't do all of the replacements in the phase and language manager.

--------------- Added [DATE]1263604427[/DATE] at [TIME]1263604427[/TIME] ---------------

I just completed this and followed your instructions, including catching all of the phrases and language edits and it's working fine. I've added a small script on my register.php page to record ip addresses of those who try to register through that page to see if I miss anything that looks legit.

[thisgeek]

Originally Posted by thisgeek

Here's something I'm trying - if you have access to your .htaccess, and mod_rewrite is enabled:

Completely forbid access to your /register.php unless the referrer is coming from your own site (that is, the user clicked the 'Register' link on your site). This prevents bots from directly accessing /register.php.

Drat. I've come up with an issue with this approach - it prevents people from activating their accounts.

I'll have a fix for it soon. Just need to somehow exclude the activation link from the redirection... I'm just having trouble with it at the moment.

[MaryTheG(r)eek]

Originally Posted by edward hamilton

Thanks I'm definitely going to try it again tonight. This makes so much more sense than the other approaches.

I didn't do all of the replacements in the phase and language manager.

--------------- Added 16 Jan 2010 at 03:13 ---------------

I just completed this and followed your instructions, including catching all of the phrases and language edits and it's working fine. I've added a small script on my register.php page to record ip addresses of those who try to register through that page to see if I miss anything that looks legit.

Yes, works fine. Now I can definetelly say it. But somehow I missed the spamm registrations ...lol... My site has just 47 members... Less than the mods that I've post here 3 years now

[Vaupell]

lovely,

Should make a suggestion on Vbulletin.com about adding funktion to config.php
to rename register.php to your likeings..

just like we renamed admincp and modcp folders..

[thisgeek]

Fixed! People can now successfully activate their accounts from the link mailed to them.

The corrected code is below. Essentially it's fixed by adding the following rewrite condition to the TOP of the ruleset:

RewriteCond %{QUERY_STRING} !^a=act&u=(.*) [NC]

Originally Posted by thisgeek

Just replace "domain\.tld" with your own domain.

EDIT: I've fixed the rewrite code so activations now work.

RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{QUERY_STRING} !^a=act&u=(.*) [NC]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !^http://(.+\.)?domain\.tld/ [NC]
RewriteRule register.php$ - [F]

Or, if you're inclined, create a sticky locked thread where you rant on a bit at bots, and redirect them to that instead, or use the topic to explain to people that they need to use the register link on the main site instead of accessing /register.php directly.

RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{QUERY_STRING} !^a=act&u=(.*) [NC]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !^http://(.+\.)?domain\.tld/ [NC]
RewriteRule register.php$ http://www.domain.tld/showthread.php?t=12345 [R,L]

For what it's worth, this seems to have reduced quite a lot of bot registrations.

[radmoose]

I think this is a great idea as it does cut down on general automated scripts that look for register.php however, I also suggest using something like the StopForumSpam plug in to deal with some of the other spammers or those that figure out that you changed the name of the page.

As far as questions/answers there are those that will go to the trouble of figuring out all of your Q&A and put them into the script to deal with.

Multiple levels of defense are all good, as long as it doesn't compromise the registration of legitimate users.

I hope that 4.1 (or maybe 4.0.3) will get the option to change the register.php name.

StopForumSpam for 4.x: https://vborg.vbsupport.ru/showthread.php?t=230921

[TheSupportForum]

does anyone know how to create a redirect using php

i want it to redirect to a dfferent site within 5 seconds is this possible

[dtv100]

what about changing also the way create new thread and post work ?
that would stop Auto Posting Apps.

example:

newreply.php
newthread.php

to

newcomment.php
newtopic.php

[Ted Clore]

What happens at upgrade time?

[MaryTheG(r)eek]

Originally Posted by Ted Clore

What happens at upgrade time?

Still haven't upgrade, as I haven't time. Most probably I'll go directly to 4.0.2, but for sure I need to do the same work. In any case is better to do some extra work, than to moderate registrations. I had NOT EVEN A SINGLE spamm registration, since the time that I used this method.

Maria