1 Topic by movingzachb (edited by movingzachb 2008-09-20 15:18)

  • Registered: 2008-09-19
  • Posts: 34

Topic: I need SPAM protection very badly!

I am looking around to find some serious spam protection.
It shows I have users (guests 5 or 8 on) but I know they are spam bots.

I had an issue where my registration was not working.  If you would click register then the page would just stick back to the same login page where you clicked it. I downloaded a slightly newer version of the forums and replaced the registration.php file with the one from the new version- it worked after that. Before this I had absolutely no spam - I don't know if the new registration.php I used has anything to do with it but I just wanted to mention it.

Otherwise, I am seeing lots of spam protection items for NU php all script editing. There is one that tells you to edit the registration.php and ADD this or ADD that - but the instructions are not consistent with what I have in my registration.php file.

I am just not good at editing code from my existing files. I will do it if I have to but I really want something - like an easy plug-in I can ad for this.  Right now I have suspended my registration until I can resolve this. I'll paypal anyone 25.00 if they can succesfully ad this or show me how to add this in.

Thank you for any help you can throw at me.

http://www.xtcradio.com/forums

  • Registered: 2008-09-19
  • Posts: 34

Re: I need SPAM protection very badly!

no help? I have installed akismet but that is not stopping them. It has caught a few but people still register strange names and I don't want that.

  • Registered: 2008-09-19
  • Posts: 34

Re: I need SPAM protection very badly!

Gonna keep bumping this.

4 Reply by khosk

  • khosk
  • Junior Member
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  • Registered: 2008-08-25
  • Posts: 3

Re: I need SPAM protection very badly!

I have installed one of the anti-bots code and then been modifying it to make the image more difficult to read.  I'll let you know how it goes.

  • Registered: 2008-09-19
  • Posts: 34

Re: I need SPAM protection very badly!

khosk wrote:

I have installed one of the anti-bots code and then been modifying it to make the image more difficult to read.  I'll let you know how it goes.

Thank you right now I am getting shielded by akismet very well - But i am getting all these bogus registrants driving me crazy like Palins voice.

  • Registered: 2008-09-19
  • Posts: 34

Re: I need SPAM protection very badly!

I had disabled registration on my forum -  I am getting fake bot registrations every 2 minutes - literally - even though I STILL have email registration turned on. I am thinking of a new kind of forum if I can't fix this.

  • sirena
  • sirena
  • Senior Member
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  • Registered: 2006-04-06
  • Posts: 473

Re: I need SPAM protection very badly!

If you are on 1.2, try adding this this simple anti-spambot mod to your register.php:

http://punbb.informer.com/forums/topic/ … e-mod-v08/

It's *very* easy to install and customize in its basic form and has been proven to be very effective in stopping the kind of bots that seem to be bothering you.

  • sirena
  • sirena
  • Senior Member
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  • Registered: 2006-04-06
  • Posts: 473

Re: I need SPAM protection very badly!

PS - you really do need to update your PunBB to the current version.

v1.2.15 is OLD and there are many fixes in v1.2.20, not the least of which relate to various security problems. If you aren't careful. spambots may be the least of your problems. Upgrading ain't that hard to do.

Nice simple style BTW. I like.

  • Registered: 2008-10-18
  • Posts: 9

Re: I need SPAM protection very badly!

I found a code update on this forum to enable me to implement a spambot question. we were getting 50 spammers per day joining up, I have had no spam since we put the spambot question smile

10 Reply by xpress (edited by xpress 2008-11-26 17:04)

  • Registered: 2008-11-26
  • Posts: 1

Re: I need SPAM protection very badly!

What I did was to rename register.php so the bots couldn't find it. I used a search and replace script to replace all instances of register.php with some non-sensical file name which is not at all relevant to any forms. For instance, file name wagonwheel.php, ( and don't copy that, make up your own ). Then I renamed the actual register.php files. I was surprised to find that there is more than one. There is another in the lang directory.
The find and replace script I used wrote to a log file, so that made it easier to see whether it worked or not and what the problems were.
I did this first on my local winlamp installation. On the server, I ran into file write permissions problems. I just replaced the files from local rather than change file permissions.
Since renaming register.php, I've had no spam-bots registering. They work off of a list of URLs to form pages, so changing the URL stops them. People can still register in the normal way.
I'm no programmer, but I think it might be good if there was something in punBB or an extension that changed all references to register.php into something dynamic like a variable and let admins of forums set the filnames for form pages themselves into something the spambots cannot find.