How to abolish this spam

[Smokey]

Well, phpbb isnt the best forum board system around, but  changing would be too much of a hassle.

So, to try and help the mods out ( or not? ) iv reasearched some anti-spam mods for the forum.

http://www.phpbb.com/phpBB/catdb.php?mode=download&id=2006624
This one says it detects the spam posts, and deletes it automaticly.


http://www.phpbb.com/phpBB/catdb.php?mode=download&id=1970283
MOD Name: Anti-bot Guest Post Mod
Author: otseng
MOD Description: This MOD makes it a little bit harder for a robot to make an anonymous posting. It will ask to select a dropdown to confirm an anonymous post.


PhpBB has there own anti-spam mod, but it was only free untill april.

Anyways, hope that this  helps. If needed i can assist in installing these.

[Stof]

Maybe you didn't notice but there are no anonymous spam postings here. All the posts were made by registered users.

And that anti spam mod looks fishy for me. I just can't understand how it can work

Nice try though, maybe we can try it.

[vcxzet]

you just need a visual bot check image.
you know those scrambled images of letters and numbers

[Stof]

Which are a poor protection you know. Most of them are pretty weak, especially when you use a rather standard one. The others fall to social engineering tricks. You know, when you reach a site saying : enter the word in the image to get free pron, all that when the site is a facade for a spaming bot which just retrieved the capcha from another site it wants to spam.

I say that because for that other phpBB site I was deleting spam on, we started using a capcha and let me tell you I didn't see much difference in the spam amount :/

[Smokey]

the phpbb is the problem =\

[Mikiupdown2]

I say we scare the spammers off by replying to their posts with messages such as "Obey the quorn!" and "Quorn for president!".

[David]

Or we could just remove the phpbb2 from the url...

EDIT: thay allways post in the top fourm, so add a new one above it called 'spam trap' or sumthing. stick it in a hidden div and were sorted.

[PIE]

you just need a visual bot check image.
you know those scrambled images of letters and numbers

Captchas. There is actualy one.. though its pretty weak(a harder one might help a little)... I've seen programs that can crack about any captcha. They only keep some spammers out, not all. The problem with PHPbb is its big, a lot of spammers work on finding ways to get around things in it because so many people use it. You can't just hide it in the URL or something. The bots will come in, run a script or two, see how they react, and phpBB will tell on itself even if its not indicated anywhere on the page or in the URL.

Honeypots work a little, but often programs can find if they are in a honeypot and try a different way of doing things often eventually getting around them.

[kozak6]

Would it be possible to have several captchas, with instructions to only enter a certain one?

Or have instructions, and require that the captcha be entered backwards, or something along those lines?

Edit: Speling

[Ranger]

Edit: Speling

lol wut?

[DIGI_Byte]

well the options i say are have several letter boxes and you enter a certain letter from each one like a code

please enter...

#T78RG#
#YHD93#
#83722#
#GOOTY#
#D9P7J#

#15143#

5 boxes and a number code 1-5

the person would type

'T38TP'

AND IT DOESN'T POST IN THE FIRST THREAD BOTS CAN'T SEE PAGES LIKE WE DO.

they search for 'General Discussion' or any other common thing

and smokey that first one is fake i think its designed to hack the forms from the inside out and stuff. like it starts of small and get in secretly.

the second one im not too sure on...

[Undeference]

IMage verification is a very bad protection measure. Not only can many bots recognize the characters accurately 90% of the time (and failures don't really matter - they can just try again), but they leave out a whole possible group of members. If your eyesight is not perfect, you may not be able to recognize the characters and fail where a bot would succeed. Or in many cases nowadays, even if your vision is perfect, you'll still only enter the right characters 50% of the time.

A (slightly) better method would be to require forum activity before creating new threads. Additionally, new posts (by new members) might require acceptance by the administration. This would require moderators to act much more quickly, but at least it would prevent people from seeing the spam. (It could be circumvented... by using an actual human. However, at the point that a human is required, your CAPTCHA is already successful.)

[DIGI_Byte]

*double post*

[DIGI_Byte]

well what about my idea just instead of an image how about just random letters and numbers that arn't connected...

the bot would not recegnise the code it would see just '1' '5' '1'...

we would see
first line first letter
second line fith letter
third line first letter

and so on like in a grid or somthing...

[PIE]

I have seen some bad captchas that just make signing up a hassle.. We don't need that.. plus they aren't really all that great, they only keep the lazier spammers out. Forum activity before making new threads sounds like a decent idea... checking each thread however sounds like more of a problem than just catching them after they are posted. I think everyone is actually doing a pretty good job on them now. There does seem to have been a little spam explosion recently, but a lot of them are getting locked before anyone even has a chance to post on them now. Timbo picked mods just in time it would seem.
Id figure he isn't up to coding in new solutions to this forum btw.. no doubt he is busy enough. The most practical solutions that have a chance of getting implemented are good plugins that are already available I imagine.

[Undeference]

I don't remember where or what type of forums it was on, but I have seen some forums that require you to make a certain number of posts before you are allowed to create new threads. There are also some highly moderated (yuck) forums that won't accept any new posts until a moderator OKs them. (I wasn't saying this for every new post, just for the first X number of posts by new members.)

I'll see if I can find some mods that already do this for phpBB  

[DIGI_Byte]

I don't remember where or what type of forums it was on, but I have seen some forums that require you to make a certain number of posts before you are allowed to create new threads. There are also some highly moderated (yuck) forums that won't accept any new posts until a moderator OKs them. (I wasn't saying this for every new post, just for the first X number of posts by new members.)

I'll see if I can find some mods that already do this for phpBB  

NOOOooo.... its a dumb idea that could promot usless spamming by ppl that want to post an error or ask a question regarding trem.

my idea is good and there should be a activationlink sent to your e-mail. with 2 dud links that cancel thhe accountmake it a trap for bots.

[Smokey]

or, you cant create a new topic with links in the first post if you dont have a previous post.


Oh and its not fake, i checked the code they give you.

[DIGI_Byte]

or, you cant create a new topic with links in the first post if you dont have a previous post.


Oh and its not fake, i checked the code they give you.

i would use as a last resort. i still don't trust it though.

the post first thing has been used before and it was remove in other forums because no-one likes it.

[Stof]

Those who talk about moderator approved posts clearly don't have the intention of beeing the moderator themselves :/ As it is, my bet would be that it's far less work to delete the spam than that. And besides, that kind of spam is done mostly to get better google rankings, not for people to click on the links.

Also, asking for people to have some post count before creating new threads will only cause legitimate users to spam like mad on other threads until they reach the required post count, not counting the bots that would do the same too.

I like the current situation better.