vBulletin Mods

Can you send me an example link of what you mean my in their signatures?

They're bots trying to mooch off our google ranks. Instead of trying to get members to click their links via posts or threads. They try and sneak registrations of user accounts onto our forum system. This way they can post links to their sites in their signature, and when google goes through our forums, their sites gain google ranks (aka Google mooching).

What I've been doing is banning the bot and sending their info to glowhost to help prevent them doing it to us again or other sites. Maybe when you do a new version, take consideration of what they put in their signatures when blocking spam bots.

Don't Click these! They may be malicious!
Example of their signatures:

Block Disabled:      (Update License Status)
Suspended or Unlicensed Members Cannot View Code.

Another example:

Block Disabled:      (Update License Status)
Suspended or Unlicensed Members Cannot View Code.

If it helps. My website is www.zeldadungeon.net
We've gotten really weird ones too.

Well, I am pretty sure those links have no follow tags on them. At least all the links on our board does so there is no chance of them gaining PR from that.

But what I was asking for is a link to whatever you are looking at because I dont see it on our forum where a "non-poster" can have links that are public.

Something like this?
http://zeldadungeon.net/forum/member...boutme#aboutme

We more or less want to slowdown them registration at our site.

You could hide signatures and WoL to unregistered. Then bots will never gather that info.

Well, I think Stabatha is on the right track. Except, that example appears to be a registered user.

Spam-O-Matic allows you to make a Newbies group, where all your newly registered users go. That usergroup should not have signature permissions (among other things). After 10 posts or whatever you set it to, then they graduate to the registered users group which probably should have signature permissions based on your forum's policy.

We will eventually add the thing in admincp, but in this case the problem is preventable from the get-go.

I keep getting this when using the spam-o-matic to remove users:

Block Disabled:      (Update License Status)
Suspended or Unlicensed Members Cannot View Code.

This does not happen on an unmodified board with a properly installed Spam-O-matic. Please make sure your installation is correct and if the issue continues you will have to disable all mods and try it. Then enable them one by one until you find the conflict.

there is several outdated code in functions_ghsom.php function calls to

fetch_template();
print_output();

will cause errors as those are 3.8.x (and lower) only

SOM doesn't use fetch_template(); anymore.

print_output(); is used in vB4 sources so it should not cause any errors.

you're correct about print_output still i see code like

Block Disabled:      (Update License Status)
Suspended or Unlicensed Members Cannot View Code.

in /includes/functions_ghsom.php it might be me using an outdated file but i don't think so not a serious problem though the system still works fine

Will this work with 4.1.2?

You must be running an older version. The latest version was redone to use vB_Template class instead of outdated functions

Yes.

Yes, working with my 4.1.2, great mod.:)

you're right :o sorry

I think I may have found a problem with "Put New User Into Newbies Group".

If enabled while the standard vBulletin "Verify Email address in Registration" is also set to Yes, the verification process still goes through the motions, but is being bypassed because members are placed straight into the Newbies Group rather than "Users Awaiting Email Confirmation".

The user still receives a verification email, but when the verification link is clicked they get a message saying they're already verified. Email verification would appear to be rendered useless.

I have for now disabled Glowhost's "Put New User Into Newbies Group" and have instead replaced the process using vBulletin's standard Promotions facility.

Good information, I will look into it.

But one thing to consider is, if email validation worked as intended, you would not have any bots. The bots are able to get past this process. So having it means an extra step for your human visitors. So ask yourself the question of if human validation is more important than putting all new registrations in the newbies group thereby limiting the damage potential a bot can do...

I agree with you that if this problem exists, we should try to get it working as intended. But I see not much value in email verification these days considering the bots get right by it and there is always a chance your legit users have the verification email undelivered due to many email factors. You might actually end up loosing legit users which is the opposite of what you are wanting to do.

You are forgetting that the email validation is not only to block spam bots, but also to prevent to become a spammer yourself. If you do not validate emails, then your site is sending large quantities of email to unrelated and inexistent email addresses. Therefore you would be sending spam and risk your site to be blacklisted as a spammer.

I have no idea what you mean actually. You have no control over the email address that the spam bot registers with, and thus the system sends the validation link to whomever the spam bot told it to go. So sending large quantities of email to illegitimate users is beyond your control unless you disable email validation, which is along the lines of my first post.

What did I miss? Can you give us an example scenario of what you mean?

I'm curious if Glow Host anti-spam generates this error? Can someone with Glowhost try to validate a thread via mod panel?

I get this error:
Special Note: You need to try and validate more then just 1 thread.

How do we change the error message shown upon an unsuccessful registration? i.e. the message shown when a spammer is detected at registration.

hi, on forumhome when I click on statistics, I"m redirect to vb.org, it's normally??
On my folder in admincp, file glowhostspamomatic.php is uploaded but in admincp I xan't see this option in left frame, only is vb=>options work fine, what's wrong? thx
vb4.1.2

I like email verification, not for bots, but simply to make sure every registered email address actually exists.

I'm less worried about using the Glowhost newbie system. OK, it's easy to set up, but it's a reinvention of the wheel in as far as vBulletin already provides the means, via usergroup promotions, to do exactly what the Glowhost newbie group does.

No worries. :up:

Onto another subject:

Had a post slip past "Auto-Moderation: URL Count" (set to 0) today.

I believe this to be the culprit:

Block Disabled:      (Update License Status)
Suspended or Unlicensed Members Cannot View Code.

The URL they posted began https: :)

Many thanks again and best wishes
Paul

You can modify that in the vBulletin phrase manager.

I'm getting a database error everytime I try to save changes to my Usergroup permissions:

Invalid SQL:
UPDATE vb_usergroup SET

MySQL Error : Unknown column 'akvbghsfs_akismet_permissions' in 'field list'
Error Number : 1054

I didn't get this error before the 2.0.2 update. How do I resolve this?

Which phrase is this exactly? I can't seem to find it. Edit: found it!

I think that is caused when you haven't completely uninstalled the previous version. If I remember correctly, it is an xml file in your Admin CP directory that is no longer needed for the current version. Find it and delete.

Hello!
This Product rocks!!
Very happy with it.
We did a small donation to StopForumSpam.com and Akismet :)

Quick question:
Is there a way to submit spammer's info/data to the spam databases (StopForumSpam) without the spammer having posted?
I ask, because we have gotten three spammers that have registered, haven't posted on the forums, yet their signatures are spam.
Instead of just deleting them, maybe it would be cool to "delete and submit".

Thank you for this awesome mod!! :)

How about a small donation to the developer of this mod? :( :)

Not yet. That functionality is coming in a later release as it is often requested.

You could cheat ;)
There's another program that allows an admin to log in as another user. You could log in as the spammer, make a post, and then report it. :D

lmao, nice work around :p

Probably don't want to do that if your settings are set to send the IP address of the spammer to SFS otherwise you will end up banning yourself from registration on forums that run this mod.

Hello,
I've setup a brand new forum and just downloaded this as the first plugin/mod on the forum.
When installing/uploading the plugin xml file I get the following error.

Warning: file_exists() [function.file-exists]: open_basedir restriction in effect. File(/usr/home/tmp/php8rXcz1) is not within the allowed path(s): (/home/jappleton/:/tmp:/var/tmp:/usr/local/lib/php/) in [path]/includes/adminfunctions.php on line 2449

No idea what's wrong or what it means. Your help would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks.

Hi there,

I've previously used your 1.2.x version but stopped it for a while, and now I found out that you've released a 2.x version.

I made sure to remove that /forum/includes/xml/bitfield_glowhostspamomatic.xml file, and then tried to install it by importing product-glowhostspamomatic.xml into "Products".

I immediately see a database error message:

I noticed there's an extra semi-colon at TYPE=MyISAM, but when I checked the product-glowhostspamomatic.xml out, there's only one semi-colon, not two as this error shows.

Any ideas what could be the problem? =/

you can submit spammers by building a form todo it in your admincp here's an example

Block Disabled:      (Update License Status)
Suspended or Unlicensed Members Cannot View Code.

allright almost there now to submit the form to SFS database you have two options

1) PHP with cURL support
2) PHP with sockets support

Block Disabled:      (Update License Status)
Suspended or Unlicensed Members Cannot View Code.

PHP through sockets

Block Disabled:      (Update License Status)
Suspended or Unlicensed Members Cannot View Code.

with this you need to check the http response either 200(success) or 403(forbidden) usage is the same as the cURL postfields above

Block Disabled:      (Update License Status)
Suspended or Unlicensed Members Cannot View Code.

i added this to the spamomatic log to check if your host supports either cURL or sockets call

Block Disabled:      (Update License Status)
Suspended or Unlicensed Members Cannot View Code.

You will need to check with your host on that. it seems like a possible misconfiguration in PHP.

Did you use the product manager to first remove the old version? It needs to be removed from there before installing the new version.

Hi there,

Sorry I forgot to mention this, but yes I did uninstall the old version first via the Product Manager, which is why I'm quite puzzled about the error too.

We just spent an hour trying to figure out why a new user's thread was automatically moderated. It turned out he used a link to a pic of himself in it. My point is that this mod is working EXACTLY as it should. Great job! ;)

I am not really sure why you would be having those problems. You might re-install the original mod. Then try to uninstall it again using product manager, then remove the bitfield file. Then install the latest and see how it goes.

Oops...good point. I didn't think about the IP aspect.:o

Sorry I am late to the party.

I installed this on a 3.8.1 board and it works.

My question is, I think something is missing
Here is what my threads all show.
https://www.vbulletin.org/forum/external/2011/03/27.png

Anyway to change it and add it to the drop down box?

Nice Mod, but there are *two* web hosting links added to my forum's footer (4.1.2). Couldn't you have just snuck one in there?

you can turn them off in the settings

Thanks...I didn't look at the settings carefully.

Hmm, its supposed to be in the dropdown box. Well, actually, in the default skin there is a popup box with these options. Looks like that theme is doing something strange with the placement of the SOM option.

anything to do with it being 3.8?

Probably. This mod doesn't work properly in anything except version 4.0 and higher.

You might want to try the older version here:
http://www.vbulletin.org/forum/showthread.php?t=248470

That one is made for 3.x boards.

PS: Dont forget to delete any files that you uploaded when installing this mod for 4.0 before uploading the files for the 3,8 version.

I don't know if this is coincidental, but right after I installed this mod I lost the ability to do full screen on embedded youtube videos. I went into Styles and Templates and opened the bbcode_video template and just clicked on save. After saving it shows up red in the list as if it has been modified and full screen works. If I revert the template, full screen stops working. The reverted code shows "allowfullscreen" but it doesn't appear on posts with embedded videos. I just resave the template to get it working again. My usergroup is suppose to be excluded from any spam control. My board is version 4.1.2 .

Update: uninstalled Spam-O-Matic and the problem went away...reinstalled and it came back.

Where can I download the original mod from?

Does anyone else have this problem?

You might try uninstalling then re-installing the latest version to see if it cures the problem for you. If not, I might have a copy of an older version if you lost the one you originally downloaded.

I actually can't install the latest version at all - when I try to install it, that "database error" comes up and stops the installation from proceeding.

Unfortunately I don't have the older version anymore with me, if you still have it, could you link me to it please?

Thanks again!

What version did you have installed before?

na i had the same issue with same info, but with photopost. attached is the modified file you should be ok

I changed the TYPE=MyISAM to ENGINE=MyISAM and removed ";" this happens on windows server mysql 5.5.8

I have had it installed on my site now for 3 days and this is the result.

Spam-O-Matic StatisticsSpam-O-Matic Statistics

388 Spammers Denied Registration

Before switching to Vbulletin a few days ago we had to remove those spammers manually, now its automatic. The IP/email check on its own has so far caught every spammer. Theres no need for any of the other features to be turned on.

Excellent job.

I am using the Stop Forum Spam option btw. We used it before and its always worked well.

Thank you so much! :D That indeed worked and solved my problem! I could indeed install the plugin after using the modified file.

Since I posted yesterday giving the spammers stopped 1 day ago. I am going to post todays spammers stopped so you can see how serious the problem is and how good this program has been.

I must say I am very impressed.

Spam-O-Matic Statistics

539 Spammers Denied Registration

Using v2.02 and Vbulletin 4.1.2 I've just noticed if I try and search in Google for the IP address I get the following message:


Google SafeSearch is ON StopForumSpam Search Web Search



Your search - 86.136.144.121 - did not match any documents.

Suggestions:
Make sure all words are spelled correctly.
Try different keywords.
Try more general keywords.

Is this something to do with this mod or is it something else entirely

Thanks

I have a quick question. At what point does this mod check if its a spammer. The second they click register? Can you make the check point to be after the vb email verification? The reason I'm wondering is because we do like to know that its a valid email address that is on theusers file for various reasons

It is checked after they pass the vBulletin registration and human verification (if enabled) which many bots will fail with so there is no need to check those.

I don't understand what you mean by having a valid email address. If you use email validation then you users must have a valid address otherwise they won't be able to become a registered user.

I was so excited to use this.. But!

I have v 4.1.1 and I just downloaded Spam O matic. When I installed it (Which seemed to go just fine) and thing TRASHED my sytem. I can no longer access the forum at all!

I quickly uninstalled the plugin but the problem remained. It looks like it changed something in my directory.

Vbulliten used to start in /forum/forum.php
but now it goes to:
/forum/bulletin-login/forum.php

and there IS NO /bulletin-login

I want to say up front I am new and most likely did something wrong, but any help would be wonderful!!

Jay

I don't think it would be fair to say that this mod trashed your system. It's not possible.

It sounds to me like your forum was trashed in some other way when you were manipulating the files of your forum. I can't really tell you how to fix your board as I am not sure what was done to break it. You should contact vBulletin for support to repair the forum or re-install the PHP files for the forum if that is an option for you. If uploading the PHP files doesn't fix the problem, something in your database settings needs to be updated.

I get the same error as the guy above me.

Contents of upload folder were uploaded to root and the XML file I downloaded was installed, but as soon as the plug in is enabled anyone who posts gets the following error:

Edit: Scratch that — figured it out. Just needed to add the downloaded content to the existing folders in Public_HTML, not in root.

Please note I also stated I am new, and most likely did something wrong.

Any plans on porting this over, for those of us who have upgraded to XenForo?

This would be even better if you could tag possible accounts on the profile page

Don't know. Its possible I guess but before I spend a lot of money on a license and programming to have this done I would like to see a lot more people running xenforo.

Last I read they were in trouble with vBulletin (for reasons... I forget) So, I'd also like to make sure they don't get shut down for piracy or whatever the complaint was before spending development time on something like that.

you can try this http://xenforo.com/community/threads...rum-spam.5417/ it'll do the same as this mod...

I don't think XenForo mods should be discussed on vbulletin.org. If you're happy with XenForo, great- but they have their own forums.

For the record the issue with Spam O matic that cause my bullietn to go bonzo was Jfusion. That was the plug in that broke the forum. I think Spam o matic and Jfusion were not playing nice together.

Anyway it's all fixed

www.infotechacademy.net

Thanks for replying. This is one of the few mods to which I miss and I think you do a wonderful job on this. :)

Hopefully, we'll see you there sometime. :)

What happened to the selection in the User Profile area in the Admin CP? I have a ton of spambots that don't post, but use the forum for backlinks in the member pages and I'd like to be able to easily remove them and report them at the same time. I mean, it is clearly just as "spammy" to register just to create a backlink to a male enhancement site which has nothing to do with our forum. I wouldn't care what they put in as their home page if they contribute, but allowing backlinks for free with no writing contributions?

I have just installed this mod and this is superb. Many thanks.

However, I have a slight problem. Where it details the activity at the footer of the the forum home page, it is hyperlinking the title to this thread. My CSS is such that the link appears blank as it is set to white for the link, before being followed.

See the footer here:

http://www.politicsandcurrentaffairs...orum/forum.php

How do I remove this hyperlink?

Have I missed something?

Cheers!

Woops. Just found the setting. Sorry!

Hello,
just instaleld and seems to work pretty good, congrats and thanks :D How can I check all my already registered users/bot trouigh this plugin? I have 90% of registered users that are bots.

Thanks :)

Just installed it after getting about 50 spammers in the past couple of weeks...I can see the flood coming. :)

Is there any way to back-check all the accounts so I don't have to do it by hand?

Any way to hide the "Spam-O-Matic Statistics" from regular users? Ideally I'd like to have that information only viewable by Admins and Moderators.

This one is one of the favorite questions that people like to ask. The short answer is it will be re-introduced in a later version.

This is a bad idea. This one has also been answered as well. The problem is the SFS database has a limit to the number of queries that you can do in a day. if you exceed it, you will get banned, possibly permanently from using their service.

While we could make something like this for smaller boards with less than 5000 members, large boards would need some really nice scripting and a cronjob to do the lookups in batches. That's a lot of code and a lot of support for a free mod. The other problem with this idea is that many boards are very old and have members that are also very old. Submitting that kind of data would likely produce a lot of invalid bans because whatever IPs were spamming say, 5 years ago are likely not doing so now and that Ip has probably been recycled to a legitimate web user.

The idea behind Spam-O-Matic (and most firewalls) is it blocks fresh known bad-guys, and over time, the bad-guys eventually fall off the list. Submitting stale data is not so nice.

So, it is not as simple as it seems at first glance, and probably will not be implemented except if someone needs it on a custom basis we might consider developing a custom version for someone. But it would be a paid mod due to the support involved.

No, but that is a nice idea. I guess if people really want this we can add it based on popularity of the request.

Thanks for the answer! I have a lot of moderation of real people. is there any "whitelist" I got 5 people in one day that had this issue.

Thanks

Alex

While I love this mod, after upgrading from a previous version I have the following issue. When editing a post using quickedit, I am presented with an error:

Block Disabled:      (Update License Status)
Suspended or Unlicensed Members Cannot View Code.

When I disable the Spamomatic, this goes away.

I will say this... The log file blew me away. I can't get over how many spammers it caught since yesterday when I installed it!

***EDIT***
I had to disable this mod totally. I noticed there have not been any new posts since I installed the mod so I figured I'd give it a shot myself. I went to create a new post in one of my forums and received this:

Block Disabled:      (Update License Status)
Suspended or Unlicensed Members Cannot View Code.

In Plug-in Manager find the plugin Stats render - forumhome_complete change it so it looks like

Block Disabled:      (Update License Status)
Suspended or Unlicensed Members Cannot View Code.

First of all, I have to say that I am very impressed. In less than 15h, it already stopped 53 spammers to register.....

I do have some suggestions if I may.
1- Add a link visible for given groups to access easily the log
For instance, Admin/Moderators could click on the "Spam-O-Matic Statistics" title to access quickly the log to see if it is working properly or not (who has been banned/etc).

2- Allow to report thread to spam-O-matic.
Currently, the Spam-O-Matic option in moderation tools is only available in showthread moderation tools, whereas you have sometimes many threads that got automoderated that you could report very quickly as spam, if the Spam-O-Matic option was available from the forum view.

3- Moved deleted spam threads/posts to a SPAM forum
For instance, I only allow "soft delete" of spam messages to make sure that my moderators do not tagged as SPAM incorrect posts but that can result in several posts in a same thread or threads in forum that are deleted making the forum/thread difficult to read for admin/mod so by moving them to a dedicated spam forum, you can still go through them without cluttering the forum.

4-Manually report a user to spam-o-matic.
For instance, I have some users that only sent spams through PMs. I would like to report them to the spam databases but I cannot find a way to do that.

Thanks
Ludo

My logs are showing that users cannot be checked because there is a problem connecting to stopforumspam server. Anyone know what is causing this?

I don't know if this has been requested yet, but would there be a way to add an option for where to locate the stats on the forumhome? Right now it is set to:

Block Disabled:      (Update License Status)
Suspended or Unlicensed Members Cannot View Code.

but I changed it for my site to the following:

Block Disabled:      (Update License Status)
Suspended or Unlicensed Members Cannot View Code.

thank you sir :)

yes in the stats render plugin at the top write this (first line of code)

Block Disabled:      (Update License Status)
Suspended or Unlicensed Members Cannot View Code.

at the bottom (last line)

Block Disabled:      (Update License Status)
Suspended or Unlicensed Members Cannot View Code.

that should do it

this could be because you have leaseweb ip ranges blocked you need to unblock those and then it will work

Don't have any IP ranges blocked at the server level. It had been working fine for months, and about 2-3 weeks ago it started just failing.

The error messages I get are
Spam-O-Matic Tagged username - Paibiddibboda Unable to connect to StopForumSpam.com. This is probably due to some temporary problems on their website: Unable to check. User passed to vBulletin registration system per your settings at 'StopForumSpam: Query

Spam-O-Matic Tagged email - [email protected] Unable to connect to StopForumSpam.com. This is probably due to some temporary problems on their website: Unable to check. User passed to vBulletin registration system per your settings at 'StopF

Spam-O-Matic Tagged ip - 46.17.96.20 Unable to connect to StopForumSpam.com. This is probably due to some temporary problems on their website: Unable to check. User passed to vBulletin registration system per your settings at 'StopForumSpam: Query Connect

Obviously the server is working, but for some reason it can't be accessed.

Sounds like they have firewalled you or you have firewalled them. You can ask your host to check for you or ask on stopforumspam forums to see if you are blocked.

GlowHost, thanks for your efforts on making such an antispam tool. I get this message when I try to post after installing the spam-o-matic:
-----------------------
Warning: require_once(includes/functions_ghsom.php) [function.require-once]: failed to open stream: No such file or directory in [path]/includes/functions_newpost.php(443) : eval()'d code on line 5

Fatal error: require_once() [function.require]: Failed opening required 'includes/functions_ghsom.php' (include_path='.:/usr/lib/php:/usr/local/lib/php') in /home/santifan/public_html/forums/includes/functions_newpost.php(443) : eval()'d code on line 5
------------------------
Any idea of what I'm doing wrong?

Thanks

Using 4.1.2 experiencing a problem where users promoted out of the Newbie group are having all posts go to moderation status. Even posts with no url's and no "Auto-Moderation: Bad Words" contained in the post.

The moderated threads are not being listed in the SOM log with any reason behind why they are being placed in moderation status. This is happening across multiple forums, and only affects users that were auto promoted by the SOM Newbie --> trusted user promotion system.

Once disabled, the problem seems to have gone away. However the affected users had to be merged into a new user id# because even after the SOM auto promote, and moderation was disabled...their posts alone were still going to moderation status.

I even tried manually placing these users into usergroups that are not subject to the spam filters...still no luck. :confused:

I will note...that I am still using the SOM system to deny registrations and moderate url posts. That aspect of the system works fantastic! Just seems to be a bug with the auto-promote / newbie system in SOM.

Did you upload functions_ghsom.php into your includes folder?

Thanks for the report. That is the first I have heard of this problem. Does anyone else have the same issue?

Would you kindly take a look at my post: http://www.vbulletin.org/forum/showp...&postcount=780

I'm open for all types of suggestions.

I am not sure what those errors mean. You might try disabling your other mods and then try again only with SOM enabled. Then re-enable them one at a time to see which one conflicts with SOM.

Does this work on VB 3.86?

there's a 3.x version.

I saw that, however it is not supported anymore, so I was hoping we could use this one, so it would be supported.

Is that possible?

A. probably not. It might but its not recommended as we have not tested it and it was not built for vB3. There is an older version that works on vB3 here. http://www.vbulletin.org/forum/showthread.php?t=248470

It is not supported but then, neither is vBulletin 3 as of a few days ago.

Not working for me under 4.1.2
When I activate the Plugin, The Newest Posts and the AdminCP are very buggy.
Please fix that. I´ve hard problems with Spambots befor i start using your addon.
Regards

I'd need a more detailed description than "very buggy" to fix anything.