Forums being plagued with Spam registrations for 12 months

Draeger

Draeger

Draeger

Soldato
Joined
4 Feb 2004
Posts
13,465
Location
Écosse
I set up a basic website and SMF based forums for friends a couple of years ago. Everything was ticking along fine until about 14 months ago when we began to get literally hundreds of spam registrations per day. I increased the CAPTCHA level to its highest and it died down. Then out of nowhere, it flared up again about 12 months ago. We ended up changing registrations over to manual admin approval only but still have to go in every few days and delete hundreds of spammers trying to sign up and awaiting approval.

Anyhow, for the last few months, registration has been completely disabled and obviously this fixes the spammer problem. However I changed it back to allow new registrations albeit still with manual approval and within literally hours, the same spammers were back. In the first 10 minutes I had 34 new members awaiting approval. Most of these are the usual mish mash of random letters and number type names and a lot seem to originate from Eastern Block contries like Poland, Russia etc.

Why on earth does this happen, as in - the forums had the registrations completely disabled and as soon as allow new registrations even after months, they just jump right back in and start hammering away again?. I thought they would have got bored and moved on to another target!!.

Any ideas folks?. I know there aren't probably many people here who have knowledge of SMF based boards as they seem to be less popular than say vBulletin etc but I'm hoping I can try and sort this out somehow, maybe with additional security plugins?.

Any advice appreciated. :)
 
Last edited:
mrbell1984 said:
It's registration/spam bots around the world. All you can do is add spam protection. I would change the security from captcha to a question /answer type.

Have you got the link?
Click to expand...

Unfortunately the version of SMF I'm running the forums under is out of date and I haven't upgraded as yet. I don't believe there is an option in there as standard to change the CAPTCHA to a Question / Answer method. I'll post the link but in "code" form as I'd rather it didn't get flagged up here on the forums in any search engine results. :cool:

Code: 
http://glasgowkayakclub.com/smfforums/index.php
 
To be honest with you I would suggest upgrading it to the latest version first. As spam bots become more intelligent the forum creators need to try and keep up with finding out how they work and create code to overcome the problems.
 
Yeah, I'll do that. I kinda thought as much. I'll admit it is running on a very outdated version of SMF which is entirely my fault for not taking the time to make backups and upgrade as the subsequent versions were released.
 
The spammers have most likely been reported and their IPs blacklisted... we run something for Joomla which looks for bots with blacklisted IPs trying to register, and now we rarely get any spam bots signing up.
 
How does OCUK forum avoid spammers?
From what the OP said, registration bots seem to be a major problem.
 
sunama said:
If this truly works, why doesnt the OP incorporate this system into his own forum...or is it difficult to implement?
Click to expand...

I first of all need to update the forum version I'm currently using. Then those or similar options will be available to me. To clarify, it's not actually spam threads and posts I'm having issues with its just spam registrations. They can't actually post any of their drivel unless myself or the other Admins manually activate them which obviously won't happen. It's just getting tiresome having to drop by the forums all the time and delete the spam registrations.
 
Out of interest, if you were to authorise these spammers, what do they post?
Adverts for viagra (or similar)?
Do they actually post in threads or even create new ones?
 
Going by the spammers that got through to us in the early days and actually posted then it can range from anything like porn links to fake fashion items. They mix things up a little, some start completely new threads, some just post in valid threads and either include thinly disguised links to the wares they are attempting to pedal or are a bit more subtle than that in the respect that they will post in response to a previous post in much the way that a human would do. The only difference being is their custom signature will include links to again, the wares they are pedalling.

I'm of the opinion that the onslaught we are facing atm is a mixture of bots and human spammers, it is usually reasonably easy to tell the difference between the two.
 
thing is as you get more traffic it happens and you need to dedicate time to sort it . part of the parcel of having a busy site :(
 
I've updated to SMF 1.1.16, the latest version I can upgrade to without going to SMF v2.0.

I'm considering making the jump and installing v2.0 ( verification questions for new registrations wasn't added until v2.0 so it would be sensible to bite the bullet and upgrade to it ) but I've been browsing the SMF Support forums and there are a fair few horror stories about folk loosing their 1.1.xx forums and things going wrong with database backups not working etc. I'm slightly in the dark about performing the upgrade to v2.0 despite reading the SMF Wiki upgrade guide. I'm wondering if anyone can answer me this ( I'll be posting up on the SMF Support forums anyway but wanted to ask here as well ;) ).

When I carry out my backups I have done so from within the SMF Admin panel. I've also done it via my server cPanel mySQL database backup function. So having carried this out, does that mean that everything will have been backed up from my forums in their current form?. As in threads, posts, images, photos, attachments etc?.

I've also hopped into my hosting and via Filezilla I've copied the entire SMF forum directory folder to a safe place. Which should I use to get a newly upgraded to v2.0 forum back to all the content I had within my current 1.1.16 forum?.

I understand the various steps contained within the actual upgrading process but it's this backing up and restoring everything issue that I'm a bit wary about. :cool:
 
m4rkw7 said:
Back the DB up via phpmyadmin as well
Click to expand...

Will do. And then once the forums have been upgraded to v2.0 all the threads, posts and forum tables should be exactly as they were before the upgrade, only it will be running v2.0?. What I mean is that making the backups is purely a precaution should something go wrong with the upgrade, is that right?. I won't need to restore from a backup once the upgrade completes in order to get everything back to how it stands at the moment?. I'm running no mods and the default theme.

Apologies, blonde moment. :confused: :p
 
Back up the DB yourself as mentioned also back up any files, you shouldn't have any problems doing the upgrade but better to be safe than sorry.
 
Draeger said:
Will do. And then once the forums have been upgraded to v2.0 all the threads, posts and forum tables should be exactly as they were before the upgrade, only it will be running v2.0?. What I mean is that making the backups is purely a precaution should something go wrong with the upgrade, is that right?. I won't need to restore from a backup once the upgrade completes in order to get everything back to how it stands at the moment?. I'm running no mods and the default theme.

Apologies, blonde moment. :confused: :p
Click to expand...

Yes, like stated - just back up your DB via both PhPMyAdmin and SMF forums and then upgrade to 2.0.2 via the upgrade method. The back up is just a precaution "in case" something is to go wrong, which shouldn't if you do it right. :)

Also, once you have it up and running install Stop Spammer. This MOD works better when used with MOD httpBL but make sure you read the tutorial on that one.

I use the Stop Spammer, Medium CAPTCHA and 1 verification question and not one spammer has been able to register.

Simply register your site at www.stopforumspam.com and use the API key provided for Stop Spammer mod.
 
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