Spambots and other intruders

BGuttman · by **BGuttman** » 2019-06-09 8:37 a.m.

I've been noticing that all the spambots and other undesirables seem to congregate in the Music Business board.

Is it possible to restrict posting on this board to approved members (i.e. two posts or more)?

Matt_K · by **Matt_K** » 2019-06-09 8:58 a.m.

That's a good idea. There are also some new tools that the most up-to-date version of phpBB allows for to keep spam off but I haven't turned them on yet --- busy weekend. Hoping to finish today and then maybe see if getting some of these new features enabled helps turn it off so to speak.

The bots are picking up on the word 'business' from what I can tell and spamming it with related ads. I wonder if that really works on other people's phpBB forums. I'm guessing so or else they wouldn't bother but so far, it would seem that literally only two of us see the ads (and usually one) before they're taken down. So I can't imagine that's good for their bottom line... weird.

BGuttman · by **BGuttman** » 2019-06-09 9:37 a.m.

I think you should look at how your cleanup bot is working. When I go to the Music Business board there are dozens of topics that are reported and still there.

Matt_K · by **Matt_K** » 2019-06-09 10:48 a.m.

[quote="BGuttman"]I think you should look at how your cleanup bot is working. When I go to the Music Business board there are dozens of topics that are reported and still there.[/quote]

Now that you mention it, I think it only takes care of any topics created by the spammer, not posts. That should nominally be an easy fix.

Neo_Bri · by **Neo_Bri** » 2019-06-11 2:06 a.m.

Thanks for working on this.

Bonearzt · by **Bonearzt** » 2019-06-13 11:06 p.m.

Is there a way to ban multiple spam posters? Takes a long time to go through the process of banning each disapproved spam poster.

Thanks!

Eric

Matt_K · by **Matt_K** » 2019-06-14 7:36 a.m.

Sorry, last weekend I was distracted last weekend looking for jobs. Didn't get fired or anything like that but current employer shot themselves in the proverbial foot so I'm looking to get out asap. Have a few interviews lined up... actually one here in 30 minutes which is 6AM my time lol So It'll get fixed, promise. In the meantime, don't feel obligated to ban them. I can clean up pretty quickly. The bot broke with the update... column name changed which means it doesn't know where to look to ban people. Should be an easy fix and it will ban people who failed honeypot and then post 5 times unapproved. Fortunately, they don't get any money from spamming our site since they only maybe ever get one view (the mods and admin can see unapproved posts but nobody else can). There are also some other anti-spam things that I can turn on that I just wanted to test out first to make sure they don't disrupt normal activities first.

Matt_K · by **Matt_K** » 2019-06-23 11:19 p.m.

I just finished installing Akismet anti-spam on our site so the spam *should* start to decline rather precipitously.

Bonearzt · by **Bonearzt** » 2019-06-24 11:03 a.m.

[quote="Matt K"]I just finished installing Akismet anti-spam on our site so the spam *should* start to decline rather precipitously.[/quote]

Thanks Matt!!!!

BGuttman · by **BGuttman** » 2019-06-24 11:16 a.m.

[quote="Matt K"]I just finished installing Akismet anti-spam on our site so the spam *should* start to decline rather precipitously.[/quote]

From your mouth to God's ears. I sure hope you are right.

Neo_Bri · by **Neo_Bri** » 2019-06-24 11:34 a.m.

Yayyyyy! I hope so, too.

Thank you, Matt.

Matt_K · by **Matt_K** » 2019-06-24 2:16 p.m.

It's a pretty cool tool. I was going to build something similar but it turns out to already exist basically if someone posts something spammy, it zaps them. If someone gets hacked and posts spam, it locks their account and notifies is. But I don't think we've encountered that issue yet.

BGuttman · by **BGuttman** » 2019-06-24 2:46 p.m.

I like the idea. Wonder how it actually recognizes a spam? We have links to all kinds of sites in those spam posts. What they have in common is they have nothing to do with our general subject matter. Or do they have a "watch list" of IP addresses or names that they flag?

Matt_K · by **Matt_K** » 2019-06-24 7:39 p.m.

[quote="BGuttman"]I like the idea. Wonder how it actually recognizes a spam? We have links to all kinds of sites in those spam posts. What they have in common is they have nothing to do with our general subject matter. Or do they have a "watch list" of IP addresses or names that they flag?[/quote]

Those links are huge giveaways because they are linked to spam sites. It also indexes all publicly available posts (anything that Google/Bing/DuckDuckGo, etc. bots can see) and then cross references it with other sites. But the big one is if they post anything from a site that purely exists for the purpose of advertising.

BGuttman · by **BGuttman** » 2019-06-25 1:41 p.m.

We just got another one. I reported it. Trying to sell "cialis".

BGuttman · by **BGuttman** » 2019-06-25 8:40 p.m.

I think they are finding a way around this new program. Got another one. This was for fake ID documents.

Matt_K · by **Matt_K** » 2019-06-25 10:26 p.m.

Aha, yeah they're getting around it by posting not links. I think I can possibly get the remainder with my bot... just need to make a few changes. Problem is that apparently there isn't any feedback to Akimai for phpBB; they're planning on making it so we can report but it isn't implemented yet so most of the reporting comes from Wordpress users evidently. I might see if I can bridge that gap... probably next weekend though. Fortunately it seems to have cut off a lot of it so that should make it easier to prune down.

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Spambots and other intruders