Bombarded with SPAM - help!

[Anthony Parsons]

The one you need specifically is: https://xenforo.com/community/resources/stophumanspam-anti-human-spam.1480/

The reason why @Ridemonkey cites the package, is because there are realistically three of exceptional use, and I will explain why:

The human anti-spam - When setup correctly, it makes it impossible to post a link anywhere on your site until they meet x requirement.

DeDos - https://xenforo.com/community/resources/dedos-anti-dos-for-spam-bot-scrapers.3305/ stops spambots smashing your server resources by scraping pages / trying to spam your site. Extremely important so your users don't leave due to poor server performance.

Stop Country Spam - https://xenforo.com/community/resources/stopcountryspam-spam-combat.1016/ which you don't need to block actual countries from registering, but the proxy banning options in that add-on alone are worth the install, as it stops anyone trying to register to your site from an anonymous proxy. Commercial grade proxies will still be allowed, such as what most companies use, so it won't stop employees registering from work, but it will stop all the nasty proxies, the free IP hiding types and types used by spammers.

Those 3 add-ons singularly cost more than 25GBP, hence buying the package is the cheaper solution to what is an impenetrable anti-spam barrier to Xenforo.

There used to be four, being the honeypot solution, but that is now default XF... and XF's is slightly more advanced as well, thus stopping all automated bot registration.

 

[tommydamic68]

Ok - I installed the "Stop Human Spam" due to mine being human spammers, will see how it goes. Thanks @Ridemonkey for the link.

 

[Stuart Wright]

Do your human spammers have something in common? What country are they in? What are they spamming?
We have lots of registrations from Pakistan spamming skin care products. No genuine registrations from that country, so as soon as Waindigo's Spam Rules addon is fixed, I'm banning the country.
That addon already allows me to put posts which contain links and are from certain countries into the moderation queue. We do that for countries like India, Bangladesh, China, Phillipeans and others and we catch almost all spam.

 

[tommydamic68]

Do your human spammers have something in common? What country are they in? What are they spamming?
We have lots of registrations from Pakistan spamming skin care products. No genuine registrations from that country, so as soon as Waindigo's Spam Rules addon is fixed, I'm banning the country.
That addon already allows me to put posts which contain links and are from certain countries into the moderation queue. We do that for countries like India, Bangladesh, China, Phillipeans and others and we catch almost all spam.

Not sure where they are from. I guess I could check the IP.
They leave a generic type post with one link- in all well written English.

 

[Stuart Wright]

Not sure where they are from. I guess I could check the IP.
They leave a generic type post with one link- in all well written English.

Check the IP and make notes of the number from each country so you get an idea. Or install the country flags Addon.

 

[tommydamic68]

The one you need specifically is: https://xenforo.com/community/resources/stophumanspam-anti-human-spam.1480/

The reason why @Ridemonkey cites the package, is because there are realistically three of exceptional use, and I will explain why:

The human anti-spam - When setup correctly, it makes it impossible to post a link anywhere on your site until they meet x requirement.

DeDos - https://xenforo.com/community/resources/dedos-anti-dos-for-spam-bot-scrapers.3305/ stops spambots smashing your server resources by scraping pages / trying to spam your site. Extremely important so your users don't leave due to poor server performance.

Stop Country Spam - https://xenforo.com/community/resources/stopcountryspam-spam-combat.1016/ which you don't need to block actual countries from registering, but the proxy banning options in that add-on alone are worth the install, as it stops anyone trying to register to your site from an anonymous proxy. Commercial grade proxies will still be allowed, such as what most companies use, so it won't stop employees registering from work, but it will stop all the nasty proxies, the free IP hiding types and types used by spammers.

Those 3 add-ons singularly cost more than 25GBP, hence buying the package is the cheaper solution to what is an impenetrable anti-spam barrier to Xenforo.

There used to be four, being the honeypot solution, but that is now default XF... and XF's is slightly more advanced as well, thus stopping all automated bot registration.

FYI -I will report this to the add on author, I created a test account and was able to successfully post a link...

This was the test users first post and was registered for less then 5 minutes. The second link was the rest user going in and adding another link.

My settings:

 

[tommydamic68]

The only question I would ask is, does the user have to hit all the mentioned criteria listed?

• minimum posts
• minimum likes
• minimum registration day

Or is it what ever is reached first, then, this would make sense why he was able to post.

 

[Anthony Parsons]

You do realise that last setting allows you to post internal site links? Which it seems you have done, within your domain name. Try an external site link, or disable that setting if you don't want them posting internal links even.

 

[Xon]

I'm using TPU: Detect and Block Spam Registrations to blacklist particular ISPs (without needing to manually add IP ranges) and to force some countries to go to a moderated status if they would normally work.

I've contributed patches to make IPv6 work for it.