vBulletin Mods

just added this, hope it works :)

/me clicks install

No, because on very large boards that would mean submitting one query for each existing user to StopForumSpam.com. They have a 5000 query per day limit so that would end up getting the larger boards banned from using their service. Unless, we built in some queue mechanism to send batches of users for checking against their database, but that is a bit out of the scope of what we want to do with this mod, plus it is not nice to submit huge batches to a service like SFS.

That has been addressed in the upcoming 2.x series.

Yes, that was addressed a few posts ago, but thanks for the reminder :)

This mod does not alter htaccess or ban any IPs. it checks a remote database for known spammers and prevents them from registering.

Permanently banning IPs is not usually a great thing since you can end up blocking legitimate traffic to your site.

Thank you, I didn't really think banning Ips was a great Idea but there are certily blocks that have no business on my local site.

It would be nice to have the ability to scan several users Far under the 5k limit, for example I currently have 256 users I suspect about 70 of them are bots. Perhaps there is a seperate tool that might do that.

You could create another usergroup in vBulletin and give that group low permissions like inability to do anything other than post, move those 70 users to the new group, then use the promotion system to change them to the regular registered members group after 10 posts or so that way you will be able to tell if they are doing anything bad or not because the only way they would get full permissions is by making legitimate posts. And I don't think many spammers or bots will waste their time writing 10 legit posts because it is easier to just find another forum to spam from.

The 2.0 version of this mod actually does that part automatically for new registrations. But no plans for making it process existing users as it is generally pointless to try to go back in time and out if old registrations even exist on the blacklist anymore, which they probably do not.

In my experience, in general your bot registrations are going to not be doing much of anything if you do not see spam from them within the day or so after they register.

thats true, and It puzzles me as to why they bother, they just become these old sleepers that skew the statistics and inflate the membership numbers.

1.2.7 works well on 3.8.6 Patch Level 1 with renamed admincp and modcp directories.

I downloaded 1.2.8 but my admin cp reports 1.2.7 installed.

Not all bots are spambots. Some are there to spread malware. That is why they are quiet.

Ahh, I do know that some malware misdirects google ads to display the smiley central banner, I hate that Ad HELLLLLLLLLLO

I read something on google today says that it does work, posted by you :)

Can you confirm for the rest of us that you like it, or it has helped, or is useful in some way?

Feedback here is what drives this mod.

Everyone, Let us know what you think please :)

Since I've installed this mod my spammers have gone to zero. Not one have gotten past the registration much less a chance to post.

Cheers and thanks for sharing this great mod with the vB community. :):up:

Since spamers are using almost standard emails i put only to search email and in that way until now (100 spamers) didn't break into forum...

And if someone break I have 10 messages without able to post URL. That should be enough to remove them.

Thnx for good work

Installed on 4.07 ...amazed at how many spambots it has stopped in less than a day

but noticed in the logs a lot of email addresses which don't include an "@" symbol
yet they still get passed on to the vB registration system
is this normal?

Edit: never mind found answer in your previous post - hey i'm a noob :)
http://www.vbulletin.org/forum/showp...9&postcount=92

Additionally
Is there a way to get as good a log from the Vbulletin Registration system
as this mod provides?

I am getting this:
"Spam-O-Matic Tagged ip - 95.67.80.146 REMOTE_ERROR: Unverfied but allowed by policy"

It still seems to be allowing the registration though it's a known spammer on stopforumspam.com

Any ideas as to the problem. I have both my akismet api key and my stopforumspam api key set in the configuration.