Can't block spam : really very annoying (Page 1 of 2)

Hi,

I've had the same issues, looks like PunBB isn't under the radar anymore

I turned off guest posting for now in 2 of my forums, I just don't have the time to deal with spam at the moment.

As for a spam solution, we can either send guest posts to a moderation queue where they have to be approved or find some solution that will not hinder legit visitors with disabilities.

Ok and thank you for replying.

I agree. To my mind, PunBB should develop some tricks to close the doors to suspect posts ; at least make spam more difficult.
Turning off the guest posting is a solution, but it is also the proof there is something wrong. Go fishing is another solution

In my idea, the task of the parser shouldn't be limited to formating the post : why not use the parser to evaluate the message ?
For example, count the numer of «http» in a post ; if there are more than, let's say, 2, so make something (pre-moderation or, easier, ask for a confirmation/verification) ;
More difficult, I suppose, a bayesian filter maybe a good solution.

What is the purpose of spam : links !
So, make something that block posts with more than X links and ask for something for confirmation.
Or, for example, say the users the links must have a special form (special bbtag for example), so that spam messages with regular links will be automatically blocked. (and don't make the parser recognize the non-bbocded links).

Last, this would be very convenient and usefull against spam, but not only : develop a script for administration to delete all what we want with numerous filters : message(s), user, topics, date. By word (from title, from name, from message), by id (delete all messages, or all members, or all topics from id X to id Y). Don't forget a «select all» box.

Ah, what surprised me, is the spam mentioned above, is the fact a banned name is able to post. How possible ?

abclf.

Hrmm, this is just a wild idea I'm posting, and it would require quite the server, but here goes:
A "Report Spam" function that sends the message, username and email of the poster to a central server when called. This server would be secured with user accounts and data transmitted through a "safe" connection (to prevent spambots populating the server). When a new post is made, the entered data would be checked against the data in the remote server. If the post/username/email finds a match, a confirmation box is shown.
This ofcourse would only be available through a mod, as it would slow down PunBB too much. And the central server would need to be way too powerful if i's a popular system.

Well, it seems logical to me that if some person posts as a guest some other person should be able to post as a guest right after. I know I'd get annoyed if I saw that message when I didn't post anything at all.

And it indeed would be alot of work... I might be able to do it on a per server basis (like a regular mod).

Thanks for explaining. That's all I needed to know.

I was thinking that cookies would be effective, but as you pointed out, spam bots wouldn't necessarily accept them or handle them properly anyway.

Renaming the scripts post.php, register.php and login.php did not help me to deal with spam. Bots appear to look for words like Post new topic and Register. However, when I preceded a duplicate link in the HTML comments, a-la

<!-- <li id="navregister"><a href="register2.php">Register</a></li> --><li id="navregister"><a href="register.php">Register</a></li>

bots started to follow register2.php because that link appeared first. It appears that they try to match the first link that has the word "Register".

To make the second link disappear from bots' view, I encoded the script names in genuine links as well as the link names like "Register" and "Post new topic" using SGML entities (a-la e-mail address encoding).

<!-- <li id="navregister"><a href="register.php">Register</a></li> -->
<li id="navregister"><a href="re.php">Register</a></li>

The spambots got lost. They now follow a non-existent link to register.php and get a 404. Real browsers will go to re.php. I did the same to post.php.

I am also thinking to add an automated ban on those who claim to be MSIE yet do not load any CSS files from the forum (am I right that a normal MSIE loads CSS files under all circumstances?). Spambots that are visiting my forum claim to be MSIE 6 on Windows 2000.

abclf: If my hdiff tool starts working my anti-spam mod will be realeased for 1st beta.

Hello El Bekko,

I get a sql error when running install :

An error was encountered
File: /home/domaine/l/languefrancaise.net/www/forum/install_mod.php
Line: 32

PunBB reported: Unable to add table spammod

Database reported: You have an error in your SQL syntax. Check the manual that corresponds to your MySQL server version for the right syntax to use near 'DEFAULT CHARSET=latin1' at line 8 (Errno: 1064)

And, two insignifiant remarks related to readme :
-post.php, for me, isn't located in include directory but at the root
-the list of the files to upload is not complet in the readme (plugin directory forgotten).

So, I'm not sure that mod will be efficient againt random message/name used by robots.
Here is a screenshot from last spam (http://www.languefrancaise.net/public/z … ssages.gif) : have a look and see by yourself :
-ip always different
-name different
-message different
To my mind, partial solution should be, first, to block messages containing more than one (not two) url, with some code, and then to impose the guest an action to effectively post (maybe a javascript box) ?

No ?

It doesn't look like similar_text has a character limit

Okay. I wrote this for mine, it works great. Try it for yours.

Open up include/common.php

Find line 1, enter this:

session_start();

Open up post.php, find this line:

// Did someone just hit "Submit" or "Preview"?
if (isset($_POST['form_sent']))
{

Right after this line, enter the following:

    $stamp = date("U");
        if(($_SESSION["LastPost"] + 35) > $stamp) {
            
            $errors[] = "You must wait 35 seconds between posts.";
            
        }

Find this line of code:
redirect('viewtopic.php?pid='.$new_pid.'#p'.$new_pid, $lang_post['Post redirect']);

Right BEFORE it, enter this code:

$_SESSION["LastPost"] = date("U");

You can change the time limit to anything you like. It's set at 35 seconds, but just change it in the code to whatever you want.

Good luck.

Hrmm, quite a good idea And it's even XHTML Strict valid