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Astralis
Senior Member
USA
1218 Posts |
 Posted - 04 February 2014 : 03:36:48
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| Please advise. |
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ruirib
Snitz Forums Admin
Portugal
26364 Posts |
Posted - 04 February 2014 : 04:57:10
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| The obvious move is manual approval of membership requests. Other than that, there are a few mods that may be of help, like the ones that require a question answered before allowing a membership request or posting... |
Snitz 3.4 Readme | Like the support? Support Snitz too |
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Astralis
Senior Member
USA
1218 Posts |
Posted - 04 February 2014 : 22:15:46
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| I'm going to look into a captcha of some sort. I had two days of spammers posting by the hundreds, all with different IPs and using old user ids. They studied the forum to figure it out. Even the links were accurate, which isn't common on a Snitz forum. |
Edited by - Astralis on 04 February 2014 22:16:13 |
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AnonJr
Moderator
United States
5768 Posts |
Posted - 06 February 2014 : 10:11:52
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I'm curious:
- What kind of volume over what time frame? (e.g. 10 posts an hour, 20 posts a day, etc.)
- What version are you running and do you have all the patches?
- If we're talking pre-3.4.07, have you added any of the items from our other spam topic?
- Are you running a stock forum or do you have MODs installed? If the latter, which ones?
- Any other detailed information you can give us that might provide an insight into what/how they're doing this?
Side note: it occurs to me we may want to develop a standard list of these sorts of questions (especially since I think I'm forgetting an important question to ask...) for people to use when posting about this sort of thing. Granted, it doesn't happen often - but I hate feeling like we're missing a detail that might point us to a quick/easy fix. |
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Maxime
Average Member
France
521 Posts |
Posted - 06 February 2014 : 20:56:57
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I agree in the same opinion that AnonJr |
Cordially,
Maxime
Taxation consists in so plucking the goose to get the most out of feathers with the least possible cries.(Jean-Baptiste Colbert)
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Astralis
Senior Member
USA
1218 Posts |
Posted - 07 February 2014 : 03:09:55
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I had about 50 posts per hour at one point, all different IP addresses and several user ids, some registered two years ago, some registered today.
They seem to throttle them to 50 posts per day if I take no action. If I take action, interestingly, they don't post until the next day. And then when they post, they only post two or three spam topics per day to see if they remain on the site. If they remain on the site, the next day I will see a deluge of spam in both topics and replies.
Every day, I see tons of new spam registrations.
I'm running a 3.4.05 forum with my own modifications. I've tried to keep the integrity of Snitz forum so I have few modifications beyond the private messages.
I need to look at the .07 update... |
Edited by - Astralis on 07 February 2014 03:10:37 |
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Maxime
Average Member
France
521 Posts |
Posted - 07 February 2014 : 05:08:21
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| I would be you I would go to the 3.407 version of the forum and also applied the patches. If you really want to prevent spam is deleted with the zap on the 3.407 forum and also installed the mod on ipgate snitzbitz.com. Then add the IP in ipgate seen how ipgate |
Cordially,
Maxime
Taxation consists in so plucking the goose to get the most out of feathers with the least possible cries.(Jean-Baptiste Colbert)
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Edited by - Maxime on 07 February 2014 05:09:34 |
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AnonJr
Moderator
United States
5768 Posts |
Posted - 10 February 2014 : 11:22:50
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Definitely time to look into upgrading to 3.4.07. Since you have minimal MODs, it shouldn't be too painful. Most of the stuff from the spammer topic I linked to earlier is built in to 3.4.07 (the ForumPoster code, ability to change required fields, and a few others). I seem to recall a few other anti-spam items getting included that weren't covered by that topic... but I don't have the code handy and my memory is failing me. I think. Maybe.
I know the Zap Profile MOD is baked in, and it will help immensely with cleanup. Assuming you've required unique email addresses, it will tie up the addresses they've been using while preventing further use from that account.
Speaking of which, you've mentioned that they're using some accounts that already existed - are they (or at least were they) accounts in good standing?
Last semi-random follow-up: can you dig in the logs and find the user agent or some other information to see if this is coming from a tool that isn't masking what it does? I suspect that they're using some sort of automated tool that posts and monitors success (and maybe even looks for the older version of the forum software), and there may be some way to identify what it is and block it like we do the ForumPoster software. Either way maybe we can spot some patterns to create some more targeted filtering. |
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ruphert
Starting Member
United Kingdom
8 Posts |
Posted - 19 February 2014 : 05:31:18
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| You can install anti-spam plugins in your site if you don't have more time in manual review to each post. |
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Classicmotorcycling
Development Team Leader
Australia
2084 Posts |
Posted - 21 February 2014 : 01:02:25
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I have had an account that I locked (my fathers who passed away) on one of my sites and they used that:
quote:
Originally posted by AnonJr
Speaking of which, you've mentioned that they're using some accounts that already existed - are they (or at least were they) accounts in good standing?
The account was in good standing. The site is also running 3.4.07 with all hot fixes and they still manage to do it. Just a matter of being vigilant. |
Cheers,
David Greening |
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Carefree
Advanced Member
Philippines
4207 Posts |
Posted - 21 February 2014 : 01:50:00
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| On one of the dummy testing forums I have, there were some 14000 pending members who registered in a 24 hour period, all from four IP addresses scattered around the globe. I didn't care, just selected them within the database and deleted the whole batch of them. Colossal waste of their time and effort, because I will never activate any additional accounts on it. |
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kerryww
Starting Member
30 Posts |
Posted - 24 May 2014 : 18:58:33
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| I made it so that when users sign up they cannot use a free email address like Hotmail or Google etc. They need to use the address given to them by their ISP. This put an end to spam. |
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bobby131313
Senior Member
USA
1163 Posts |
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Davio
Development Team Member
Jamaica
12217 Posts |
Posted - 25 May 2014 : 00:36:00
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quote:
Originally posted by bobby131313
Puts an end to a lot of members too.
LOL. I'm sorry, this made me laugh out loud. 
He does have a point tho. |
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bobby131313
Senior Member
USA
1163 Posts |
Posted - 25 May 2014 : 10:33:50
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| Yeah, you ban yahoo, gmail, and hotmail tons of people will just move on to the next forum and join there instead. |
Switch the order of your title tags |
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