Stopping Spam on phpbb forums questions: Sorry to bring it up again!!

[RSVEcosse]

I have a few questions regarding stopping spam registrations and posts on a forum of mine.

First of all, it looks like the worst offender is not actually a bot, but a human spammer. The board language is always set to albanian when he registers a username.

Is there a way I can country ban Albania and Russia as a few of the emails end in the .ru extension?. I've had a look in the phpBB Admin panel of the forums and I'm not able to see anything else to try and combat this.

Secondly, I came across this mod that someone wrote:-

# 
#-----[ OPEN ]------------------------------------------ 
# 
/includes/usercp_register.php 
# 
#-----[ FIND ]------------------------------------------ 
# 
$sql = "SELECT MAX(user_id) AS total 
# 
#-----[ BEFORE, ADD ]--------------------------------------------- 
# 
         if ($user_lang != 'english') 
         { 
         $message = 'Sorry, you appear to have triggered our spam security system.  Please go back and modify some of the information and try again. Your language is bad.<br />'; 
            message_die(GENERAL_MESSAGE, $message); 
         } 
         if ($website != '') 
         { 
         $message = 'Sorry, you appear to have triggered our spam security system.  Please go back and modify some of the information and try again. Web Site is not alowed during reg.<br />'; 
            message_die(GENERAL_MESSAGE, $message); 
         }

Would that help?. Where about do I enter all that code?. I assume its within my files either via FTP or cPanel somewhere?.

I've tried everything to combat this. I have new users having to enter a series of letters and numbers when they register and the only other thing I can see is that I've tried setting user confirmation to "Admin" where I have to allow the new registrant to become active.

The forum will mostly be used by a core of about 60 people in particular from a club, so I'm not too bothered about just anyone being able to register, I can check with the club who is a genuine username and who is not but to be honest its not hard to tell.

Any advice welcomed, the club members are a bit miffed with seeing their forums have posts about free porn and free viagra on their forums, to such an extent that they are reluctant to use the forums at all!!!.

If there is anyone that can advise I would be grateful. I am willing to try a few more things and then I see no option but to try moving over to SMF instead of phpBB. and see if that is any better/more secure.

Thanks in advance.

[WelshTom]

The above modification simply prevents registrations for two conditions:

a) the board language is not english
b) the website field is not empty

Using this script will stop anyone from registering if any of the above conditions apply.

You will need to edit the phpBB file /includes/usercp_register.php to add this modification.

SMF is worse than phpBB, especially since phpBB 3 is now in the RC stage.

[RSVEcosse]

Thanks.

Hmmm, I might use it in the meantime unless there is anything better out there just now, at least until phpBB 3 appears. Any idea when that may be available?.

When it does appear, is it simply a case of updating current forums on my hosting or does it require a reinstall ( via Fantastico )?.

[Brian]

Just ban Albanian registrants from CPanel. Ive not had spam on any of my PHPBB 2.* to 3.*RC in two years. Same said for guestbook. Do a search for spamless guestbook tutorial or sommet and see if it helps. It wont stop humans though, just bots.

[WelshTom]

phpBB3 should be out very soon, but the current RC (RC7) is considered working and stable.

[Brian]

Ive used all the Betas and RC's and found it excellent

[RSVEcosse]

Thanks guys, thats good to know.

Brian, where about within cPanel can I ban Albanian registrants?.

I cant see a way to do it through logging onto the phpBB forums Admin panel, but have not even considered doing it through cPanel.

How does one go about doing that?.

Thanks.

[Brian]

You can block IP's in IP Deny Mananger (I think its called) in security.

[RSVEcosse]

Thanks, found it.

Anyone know what to enter in there as far as IP addresses go to block country wide, as in Albanian and Russia?.

[Brian]

You should see the IP in their posts and you could wildcard 111.111.*.* but they may also be using a proxy too.

[RSVEcosse]

The thing is, they have attempted to register, but I have Admin confirmation applied so I need to allow their registration on the forums.

Until they make a post, I dont think there's any way to log their IP addy, unless I'm missing something?.

So unless I allow the registration and then wait for the first spam post from the individual, there looks like no way to record an IP?.

I could allow this individual to register and grant him access to the forums then wait for his first post, grab his IP and then ban him and ban the resulting IP I suppose, would that suffice?.

[eUKhost.com]

Originally Posted by RSVEcosse

Thanks, found it.

Anyone know what to enter in there as far as IP addresses go to block country wide, as in Albanian and Russia?.

You will need to enter series of all subnets allocated to those countries. That wont be easy to do. You will need consider some sort of phpbb mod which will allow you to block signups that come from russian email addresses like mail.ru and similar.

To block a specific country you will need to do it from server side which is not possible incase of shared hosting. VPS or Dedicated Server customers can do that using iptables or CSF firewall but that wont be possible on shared server

[eUKhost.com]

Originally Posted by Brian

You should see the IP in their posts and you could wildcard 111.111.*.* but they may also be using a proxy too.

most of them use US based servers for this task. they don't run such mass spamming scripts from their local machine. They get high configuration servers from low profile Datacenters in US and they have scripts which find and spam forums.

They do it on large scale and their bots take months to make a huge database of forums for spamming.

[eUKhost.com]

Originally Posted by RSVEcosse

The thing is, they have attempted to register, but I have Admin confirmation applied so I need to allow their registration on the forums.

Until they make a post, I dont think there's any way to log their IP addy, unless I'm missing something?.

So unless I allow the registration and then wait for the first spam post from the individual, there looks like no way to record an IP?.

I could allow this individual to register and grant him access to the forums then wait for his first post, grab his IP and then ban him and ban the resulting IP I suppose, would that suffice?.

We have recently added a mod which stops any new member from posting any hyperlinks till they complete 5 posts. This is a better solution to stop these spambots as they don't manage to figure out if their post was submitted or not.

See if phpbb has got any similar mod as we've had no such nokia mobile or viagra spam posts from last 2 weeks.

[247h]

Originally Posted by eUK-Thomas

...SMF is worse than phpBB

Is this just a personal opinion or do you have some facts or references that support this claim, that I can check out?

[WelshTom]

Originally Posted by 247h

Is this just a personal opinion or do you have some facts or references that support this claim, that I can check out?

It's a personal opinion, but it's also based on fact.

phpBB is a lot more flexible, and since the release of phpBB3, it's also a lot more pwerful. SMF is missing the power which phpBB seems to have.

[247h]

Originally Posted by eUK-Thomas

...It's a personal opinion

Yes I thought it might be and quite opposite to my own experiences with SMF and phpBB2 ...

Because it's so easy to convert a phpBB2 forum to SMF, I suggest that RSVEcosse takes advantage of that and puts it to the test himself before he ventures down the path of phpBB3.

[RSVEcosse]

Yeah, I'm going to have to do something ASAP as I woke up this morning to find another 10 spam registrations on the forums had appeared overnight.

I recall seeing something that automatically converted a phpBB forum over to SMF but I cant remember where.

Once I find it, is it relatively easy to use and do it here on my hosting with EUK?. I'm not sure if I convert it over then remove the current phpBB install or what?.

[247h]

Well I guess you have a decision to make about whether to convert to SMF or upgrade to phpBB3 and you can see from a sample of two opinions here we have opposite views! What's driving you towards SMF? How much experience of using SMF do you have already and do you prefer it to phpBB2, or is it that it's been recommended to you, or some other reason? What do you think your users would prefer?

Anyway if you're keen to try SMF I can tell you that it's probably open to abuse or spamming if you don't take steps to prevent it, but in the case of my main forum (700+ members) it uses CAPTCHA at the registration stage, whereupon I receive notifications for each which I personally vet the email and IP addresses — I no longer allow automatic registrations after ONE incident in which a p0rn0 spammer registered legitimately and then tried to cause havoc (but he was limited by me having set very restrictive newbie permissions). Yes it's extra work but I've never had a single bot attack there, nor any of the other SMF forums that have automatic registration after CAPTCHA, that I've installed for friends/customers — not one bot attack, ever, including one forum that I converted from phpBB2 after it was suffering similarly to yours ...

So if you're still keen to try SMF, here's a link to the SMF forum that's specific to Converters and Importers — I do not remember whether you need to register but it's free. You should perhaps start here though: Updated Converters List & Support Topics which points to [SMF Converter] phpBB - 2.0.19+ — the official support topic for the phpBB converter.

Then you should read as much as is relevant to you about how certain phpBB installed mods may or may not affect the conversion — I suggest that even if you were upgrading to phpBB3 you would be wise to assess whether any mods you rely on are available for it too, as they may not yet be.

Here's the SMF Downloads page for all the converters to be used with SMF 1.1.x — they're available to download as .zip or .tar.gz archives. After you've done a Fantastico install of the current version of SMF (1.1.3 as I write this), to use the converter simply upload the contents of the archive to your SMF directory and execute convert.php

Lastly, even though no-one here minds answering questions on third party topics, you'd be better off researching these changes in the respective specialist forums ...

[RSVEcosse]

Thanks for all the info, I appreciate it.

I'll read up on all that and decide what to do.

To be honest, I prefer phpBB and I believe my users do also.

I have heard many people suggest that SMF is less likely to suffer from spam registrations than phpBB does. However is that just some sort of guess on other folks part that has perpetuated via internet rumours and gossip?

I've just installed PHPBB Admin ToolKit v2.1 which is a very handy little tool. I can now at least ban and delete spam registrations en mass which saves a lot of time.

I'm going to try a few more mods to see if they are effective in slowing down the problem and if not, I'll give SMF a try and see how that goes.