I setup a spider trap for those that didn't follow the robots.txt and Baidu was the big rule breaker.  I've banned them from my forums, articles sites and they just keep coming up with more IP numbers LOL...

One option to stop them is to use a spider trap that bans them from your site if they disregard the robots.txt file (be sure though to add your spider trap page urls to robots.txt to warn the good spiders!)

Here is one example and there are more if you google "php spider trap", or "blocking spiders"..

http://www.webmasterworld.com/forum88/4242.htm

To fix the view counts (if you haven't already), backup your database.  Then open your phpmyadmin and find your punbb database.  Click on the "topics" table, then click on the "SQL" tab at the top of the page.

Enter into the SQL tab's text field

UPDATE `topics` SET `num_views` = 0

That will reset all the view numbers.

**Disclaimer**  I haven't tried changing the counts myself so be sure to backup your database first in case my suggestions are wrong.

best,

Jan

2

(52 replies, posted in PunBB 1.3 extensions)

Totally clear to me and never had any intention of doing so smile

Thanks for the clarification,

Jan

3

(52 replies, posted in PunBB 1.3 extensions)

I agree it's a moot point, although it's unclear how this applies to back reporting to their own database from their own spam report listing judging by this statement...

simply relying on other DNSBLs...

  I thought the question was reporting back to SFS from their own listings?  Sorry if I misunderstood.

This also is a bit confusing

Automatically reporting spammers on a live forum is a very bad idea. Any risk of reporting an "innocent" is too much...

 

How can the reporting back of a person listed by their own service be an "innocent" person if they've already been reported to SFS and the person reporting back is using SFS's own database?

Rhetorical questions and don't need a reply  smile

4

(52 replies, posted in PunBB 1.3 extensions)

A blocked registration cannot be qualified as spamming...

Although I respect your opinion, I have to agree AND disagree.. This morning I woke up to a nice message on one of my trap forums that started out "Hello my friends..." and continued on with some lovely images (let's just say they weren't PG rated).  I submitted him to my spammer database.

I then found 16 more spam reports from other client sites about the same IP number....

I agree when you say that a blocked registration can't be qualified as spamming until he/she's spammed your site ...I disagree in that a blocked registration IS qualified as a known spammer trying to spam again, and again and again and usually with a bot, and the more times they are reported, the more obvious it becomes they will spam your site if you let them.  One, two reports may be a mistake, but five, ten, two hundred reports makes the person's intentions clear.

I do though very much admire your fairness, and thank you for giving me permission to add to your extension.  smile

In respect to your feelings on the subject I won't add a report back of blocked spammers...

best,

Jan

5

(52 replies, posted in PunBB 1.3 extensions)

But I'm not sure about #1. Is it appropriate to report someone to StopForumSpam when they haven't actually spammed our forum yet? Is this common practice? Would like to get more people's thoughts on this.

For my spam blocking service it is appropriate to send the blocked signup back to me as I keep an "All Time Spam Activity" score for each spammer submission's IP, username and email, and it helps me build statistics on the current activity of a specific spammer.  This also helps me determine if I can deactivate an IP as an active spammer after a certain time period of no spam reports. 

The only real downside to sending back a report of an active spammer on rejection (one listed in mine or someone else's spam blocking service) is that an API key would be needed before the auto reporting could be used as the submissions without an API key would be rejected (I'm assuming SFS does as I do), and it would be a waste of bandwidth (especially on popular sites with lots of spammer signups)..... Of course, you could just add an option to do that or not smile

I'm also interested in adding my spammer signup blocking service to your extension Justice... That is, if you don't mind.  I'm studying Punbb's extension system now, and can do it if you are too busy. 

Please contact me at your convenience if you are interested.

best,

Jan

6

(4 replies, posted in PunBB 1.3 additions)

Thank you KeyDog, that sounds like a good idea if it would  be more helpful and Justice doesn't mind.  I'll check that out also...

Have a good one and thanks for your help,

Jan

7

(4 replies, posted in PunBB 1.3 additions)

Alright, I will look at that thanks!   I wrote one for another forum, and I guess I'll write one for punbb as well. I'm not sure why you'd think stoparticlespam has any bad standing in the community.  It's only been up for about a month now, and I've been very focused on keeping on top of questionable spam submissions and quick to remove disputed submissions.

how would you differentiate yourself from stopforumspam or botscout ?

Tough question.. it's like asking how you'd differentiate one police department from another as they all do the same thing.  Or, how would one differentiate one forum software from another? I guess by being new, I'm willing to work harder to help than others that may be resting on their laurels  big_smile 

Since writing an article publishing script, my reason for creating stoparticlespam was for stopping spam signups & articles on my client's sites by writing in the signup blocking code to my scripts as an added feature (my clients requested it as they weren't too happy with the constant downtime of another spam service).  I later discovered the same people that spam forums also spam article sites, so instead of just article site spam blocking, I'm doing both article sites and forums (and blogs).

Anyway, sorry for the long explanation, and I'll go figure out this forum's extension scheme and submit that way.. I'll try to also add something to make mine a little different than the others.   smile

best,

Jan

8

(4 replies, posted in PunBB 1.3 additions)

Hopefully I'm posting this in the right place and that it helps someone!

This addition to your signup page uses the stoparticlespam site for blocking previously reported (387K) spammer signups. It sends the signups ip, email and username for checking and if any are found, returns a "Yes" so you can send them to a custom denied page or wherever you wish.

Open register.php and find this code:

if (empty($errors))
    {
        $username = forum_trim($_POST['req_username']);
        $email1 = strtolower(forum_trim($_POST['req_email1']));

Right under the $email1 line, copy/paste this code:

//////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////
// stoparticlespam code start

        $ip_check = "";
        $ip_check = $_SERVER['REMOTE_ADDR'];
        
    $SAS_url = "";
    $SAS_url = "http://www.stoparticlespam.info/api.php";
   
// CHECK STOPARTICLESPAM FOR SPAMMER  
 
  $wrap = ini_get('allow_url_fopen');
     if(function_exists('file_get_contents') && $wrap == '1')
      {
       $Contents = @file_get_contents($SAS_url.'?email='.urlencode($email1).'&ip='.urlencode($ip_check).'&username='.urlencode($username));
        if(!empty($Contents) && $Contents == 'Yes')
         {
   // Your custom message
       header('HTTP/1.1 400 Bad Request');
        die("<br><br><h3 style='color:red;text-align:center;'>Sorry, but you have been listed for spamming at stoparticlespam.</h3><p style='text-align:center;'>If you feel this is an error, please contact us!</p>");
       }
     }else{
    // file_get_contents won't work so we'll try cURL instead!
    if(function_exists('curl_init'))
     {
      $ch = curl_init();
      $timeout = 6; // set to zero for no timeout
      curl_setopt ($ch, CURLOPT_URL, $SAS_url);
      curl_setopt ($ch, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER, 1);
      curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_POST, 1);
      curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_POSTFIELDS, '?email='.urlencode($email1).'&ip='.urlencode($ip_check).'&username='.urlencode($username));
      curl_setopt ($ch, CURLOPT_CONNECTTIMEOUT, $timeout);
      $Contents = curl_exec($ch);
      curl_close($ch); 
      if(!empty($Contents) && $Contents == 'Yes')
      {
   ///// A 'Yes' was returned by stoparticlespam, which means one of the submitted variables was found in their database!
  
// Your custom message
       header('HTTP/1.1 400 Bad Request');
        die("<br><br><h3 style='color:red;text-align:center;'>Sorry, but you have been listed for spamming at stoparticlespam.</h3><p style='text-align:center;'>If you feel this is an error, please contact us!</p>");
    }
   }
  }

// end stoprarticlespam code

////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////        

The code above will try using file_get_contents and if it's not enabled, try checking with cURL instead.  The

// Your custom message
       header('HTTP/1.1 400 Bad Request');
        die("<br><br><h3 style='color:red;text-align:center;'>Sorry, but you have been listed for spamming at stoparticlespam.</h3><p style='text-align:center;'>If you feel this is an error, please contact us!</p>");

part is what sends the denied person to wherever you wish them to go or see if denied.  You can also change that part to send them to a custom page if you wish.


best,

Jan

9

(0 replies, posted in PunBB 1.3 troubleshooting)

Hello,

I've just installed 1.3.6 pubBB and it appears that the "Allow posting without approval" checkbox has no effect. I allowed guests to create topics and posts but left the Allow posting without approval checkbox empty.  A little bit later, my forum was spammed by a guest... Please forgive me if I missed something in the settings!

best,

Jan