XF 1.4 bizarre spam issue

[electrogypsy]

hey folks, this isn't really the fault of XF or anything, but i thought i'd post and see if someone could clear this up for me.

i've had two spam accounts created on my board in the past two days, not sure how they got past the spam filters, but they each made one post with links in the signatures, etc... standard spam.

the weird thing though is that when i use the spam cleaner, and it checks for other accounts using the same IP address, it comes up with MY account! the admin account... i checked the IP addresses, the first of which was from hanoi, vietnam, and the second from reiserstown, maryland... neither of which are locations i've ever logged in from.

so i guess what i'm trying to figure out is, what's happening here? do i have a virus on my computer? did i install a bad XF plugin? or is this just some quirk i don't need to worry about?

 

[electrogypsy]

i guess i'm just a little worried that my admin account has been compromised somehow, and if so, how?

 

[Paul B]

Do you have an add-on installed which sends new members a conversation?

 

[electrogypsy]

yes! i do... i have andyb's new user conversation plugin installed.

 

[Paul B]

That is more than likely the reason.

We have seen various other reports related to it.

 

[electrogypsy]

thank you brogan, i'll talk to andyb about it and see what's up.

 

[rainmotorsports]

When an automated plugin creates a thread or conversation it seems to throw a random IP address onto the message. The plugin author has to set the data write options to have no IP address recorded and this should fix the issue. I have sent a message to Andy as well as am implementing this in some of my in progress add on's. Good timing too.

 

[Daniel Hood]

it seems to throw a random IP address onto the message.

I wouldn't say it's random, it appears to default back to the visitor's ip. Which is the entire issue.

 

[rainmotorsports]

I wouldn't say it's random, it appears to default back to the visitor's ip. Which is the entire issue.

In conversations perhaps. Threads however its random as it gets. Automated thread creation without having the Automated or no IP option set results in seemingly random IP's. I am sure it is coming from somewhere. But we are talking thread posts with an IP from no registered user, google bot's etc and so on.

If conversations always go to the visitor that is one thing. Fix is pretty much the same though.