1

Topic: forum spam prevention

two forum extensions have been enabled:

"stop bots"
requires you to answer two questions when registering. It also asks you these same questions when you post. It will then set a cookie so that it won't ask you the questions again for two weeks. After that it'll ask you the same questions again. They're easy questions.. trust me big_smile


"antispam"
this just adds a captcha at registration, when you go to reset your password, and when you fail several logins.

using LS since 1998. Old FPN site operator, owner of ShellFront, keeper of other LS domains
State of the Step 2011

2 (edited by Tobbe 2011-10-06 10:34:24 am)

Re: forum spam prevention

So you're saying I'll have to answer a couple of questions now then?

EDIT:
Was actually only one question smile And I could write my second post without answering any questions!

3

Re: forum spam prevention

right.. a cookie is set that means you won't have to answer questions for 20 days, according to the documentation. So, users who only visit once in a while will probably need to answer a question every time they need to post. Same goes for users who dump their cookies regularly.

using LS since 1998. Old FPN site operator, owner of ShellFront, keeper of other LS domains
State of the Step 2011

4

Re: forum spam prevention

What's the reasoning behind the 20 day limit? Seems pretty arbitrary to me...
IF the bot/spammer is smart enough to answer the question correctly the first time, it can spam the forums for 20 days, during which time we would have already banned it anyway. Plus, if it can answer the question correctly the first time, I'm sure it would do it the second time around as well...

So I'm not sure I understand what the point is. Do you know?

5

Re: forum spam prevention

no clue... I didn't write the extension big_smile

using LS since 1998. Old FPN site operator, owner of ShellFront, keeper of other LS domains
State of the Step 2011

6

Re: forum spam prevention

I guess what I'm saying is that the extra check after 20 days is pointless. So the cookie should be valid for ever.

Is it possible to configure how long the cookie should be valid for?

7

Re: forum spam prevention

I've linked two other spam preventing extensions in the "Forum Extensions" thread, post id 155

8

Re: forum spam prevention

Do members of a certain status eventually quit being nagged with these spam prevention measures?  I imagine it would only be new users that are spam bots...

9

Re: forum spam prevention

No, there is no such functionality that I know of. There is just a cookie that is being set. So if you clear your cookies often, or use different machines/browsers a lot you will be annoyed by the spam preventing extensions sad

10

Re: forum spam prevention

Both of these either don't work or are extremely annoying. Both should be disabled and reCAPTCHA used instead.

http://punbb.informer.com/forums/topic/ … recaptcha/

11

Re: forum spam prevention

I agree. I don't much like "stop bots". And I thought we already used reCAPTCHA, but we're not. "antispam" apparently uses some other form of captcha, maybe one that can be solved by OCR.

So, yeah, get rid of the annoying questions, and use recaptcha!

12

Re: forum spam prevention

Third vote for reCAPTCHA

13

Re: forum spam prevention

+1 for reCAPTCHA.

14

Re: forum spam prevention

ok.. removed stop_bots. The registration captcha remains while I look at the recaptcha option

using LS since 1998. Old FPN site operator, owner of ShellFront, keeper of other LS domains
State of the Step 2011

15

Re: forum spam prevention

removed antispam

added recaptcha


now we'll see how this affects spam on the site wink

using LS since 1998. Old FPN site operator, owner of ShellFront, keeper of other LS domains
State of the Step 2011

16

Re: forum spam prevention

Perfekt! As long as the spam rate doesn't get any worse than it was before we should keep this! (Until a better option presents itself)

17

Re: forum spam prevention

Just had someone post five identical spam posts to four different topics sad

18

Re: forum spam prevention

just deleted another post and banned the user

spam is definitely going to happen.. but if it remains manageable then we should be 'ok'

using LS since 1998. Old FPN site operator, owner of ShellFront, keeper of other LS domains
State of the Step 2011

19

Re: forum spam prevention

Is it a good idea to have to manually approve the first message every user posts?

20

Re: forum spam prevention

Here's an interesting tidbit. Yesterday on my test forum (at about 1PM PDT) I got my first spammer, after having installed reCAPTCHA. After I banned the offender minutes after posting, I installed the StopForumSpam.com extension to see how effective it might be.

Since then, in less than 24 hours, that extension has caught eight different registration attempt from eight different IP addresses. As far as I'm concerned that plugin is pretty effective.

21

Re: forum spam prevention

Worth noting is also that the SFS extension is configurable to send out emails to the blocked people. Something like "You have been blocked from the LiteStep forum because your IP address and user name combination has been used to post spam messages. If you feel this is an error, please send an email to moderator@forum.com"

22 (edited by the-golem 2011-10-28 09:16:04 am)

Re: forum spam prevention

Tobbe wrote:

Worth noting is also that the SFS extension is configurable to send out emails to the blocked people. Something like "You have been blocked from the LiteStep forum because your IP address and user name combination has been used to post spam messages. If you feel this is an error, please send an email to moderator@forum.com"

Yes and no. There are actually two SFS extensions for punbb. The one I'm currently using is the StopForumSpam.com plugin. This plugin just sits in the background, and quietly blocks spam registrations.

The one Tobbe is talking about is the SFS Antispam plugin, which does all of what he said. This one seems newer and more featured.

23

Re: forum spam prevention

So, do you will install the new one ?

24

Re: forum spam prevention

It's rootrider who decides what extensions should be installed. Poke him! smile

25

Re: forum spam prevention

I'll get to the stopforumspam extension soon smile

using LS since 1998. Old FPN site operator, owner of ShellFront, keeper of other LS domains
State of the Step 2011