XF 2.0 I'm fed up with spammers posting 500 posts a day on xenForo

[Marco Famà]

hi guys,

I literally had to close the board a few moments ago cause I can't keep up with using Tapatalk or the ACP to moderate and kill all this ****e threads

for the sake of clarity, this is my Spam Management page and how I've set it up (which, if I'm not mistaken, should be robust enough to kill):

yes, I am getting so much that is not a nice experience anymore to run my forum, as spam banning is now the work I have to do instead of replying to users.

My questions are:
1) am I doing anything deep wrong with the above settings?
2) any premium low cost solution as Akismet on WordPress or let xenForo clean up the current system (over 1000 spam threads to be killed, can you imagine??)?
3) any way I can clean it up on the database table (xf_forum) and how to do it safely with no risk?

thank you All / @Brogan

 

[Marco Famà]

I see - so I've tried to disable Tapatalk and I will now try re-opening the forum to the public, and see how that performs and if there's still a bad spammers flowing into the forum

rain, not sure how you handled the extra security over your forum, but seems impressive.. Any detailed guide to that?

thank you all

 

[Ozzy47]

I see - so I've tried to disable Tapatalk and I will now try re-opening the forum to the public, and see how that performs and if there's still a bad spammers flowing into the forum

rain, not sure how you handled the extra security over your forum, but seems impressive.. Any detailed guide to that?

thank you all

Did you remove/rename it's directory within your XF file structure? If not they will still have a way in.

 

[Tom Nunamaker]

We also use a web firewall from https://sucuri.net/website-firewall/

In a typical month we have 200,000 to 400,000 requests. Roughly 2,000 of them are blocked. It's probably the best $9.99/month I spend for my sanity.

 

[Marco Famà]

I even just got some URL's banned from Google due to the DMCA (Digital Millennium Copyright Act) violation because spam threads contained link to "watch this episode of this series online"

I'm cleaning up the forum, deactivating TT, killing the plugin totally and see how it goes after enabling the board again.

so overkilling :/

 

[Marco Famà]

We also use a web firewall from https://sucuri.net/website-firewall/

In a typical month we have 200,000 to 400,000 requests. Roughly 2,000 of them are blocked. It's probably the best $9.99/month I spend for my sanity.

Tom, this is amazing - thanks, I though this would work only as a Wordpress plugin rather than overall for xenforo etc!

 

[Marco Famà]

Guys
Although I’ve disabled and uninstalled Tapatalk today I’ve got again lots of spam attacks
See
https://timelapsenetwork.com/forum/

What can I do?!

 

[Mouth]

What can I do?!

Delete/rename the Tapatalk directory ( mobiquo ), like previously advised. Tapatalk is still available/accessible whilst that directory exists. I can still get to your /forum/mobiquo/mobiquo.php

And of course, make sure all existing and/or previously registered spammer accounts are banned/deleted.

 

[mauzao9]

The addons we use on xF 1 had reduced the spam attacks to nearly 0.

I'm not sure how they behave some things work others doesn't, but ended up not having to look for paid solutions the registrations are being blocked daily properly.

 

[Marco Famà]

hey Mouth,

I always thought "mobiquo" was part of XF installation... I killed it manually now, thanks

(I still don't understand why although I did the uninstall via ACP, it didn't remove the mobiquo folder then!)

 

[sbj]

@Marco Famà

Uninstall never removes files. You have to remove them by yourself.

 

[Marco Famà]

thanks!

will keep you posted... let's see how it goes!

 

[m1ne]

https://xenforo.com/community/resources/block-spam-completely-with-no-addons.4065/

It's for XF1 but you can do the same. Don't allow new users to post links.

 

[S Thomas]

https://xenforo.com/community/resources/block-spam-completely-with-no-addons.4065/

It's for XF1 but you can do the same. Don't allow new users to post links.

 

[Marco Famà]

Amazing advice.
Any link to understand how to?

Thanks

 

[Marco Famà]

Ps. Sometimes spam is just.. they send messages with no sense at all and no link by the way uh..

 

[Marco Famà]

hey guys
just checked now and unfortunately I got at least 20+ spam messages.

So for now:
- restrictions for the spammers are active as you saw
- all users have been banned + clean up since I have the forum
- captcha + questions is active
+ Tapatalk removed phisically

as you can see bots are still able to join my XenForo instance:
https://d.pr/i/dDclJJ

My question is: what else am I doing wrong or can I do to fix this?

thanks

 

[S Thomas]

Do you have every new registration put onto approval queue? Or can anyone just register and happily post?

 

[Tealk]

@Marco Famà Here I would have wished for an option that might have helped you too:
https://xenforo.com/community/threads/include-securimage-as-captcha.143523

If you host your webspace yourself you could also try this:
https://github.com/mitchellkrogza/nginx-ultimate-bad-bot-blocker

 

[JustinHawk]

My question is: what else am I doing wrong or can I do to fix this?

3. use email check, maybe they are using temp email providers to signup : https://xenforo.com/community/threads/j-email-check.135949/
https://mpm.pm/resources/j-email-check.6/
https://xenforo.com/community/resources/banned-emails-1-636-trashmails.6103/
4. are they using proxies ??

Are you blocking registration via temp mail providers ? Also you didn't answered what kind of emails they are using and are they using proxies ? anyhow if you want to block registraion via temp mails and proxies you can use one of my addon i.e https://xenforo.com/community/resources/j-email-check.5753/

it can block both temp emails as well as proxy registrations. After this if still the spam continues, get those spammers real IP (Mostly PK ISP), and get the ASN of that IP and block that ASN via cloudflare completely or via server firewall.

 

[Marco Famà]

Do you have every new registration put onto approval queue? Or can anyone just register and happily post?

umh... yes they were

Now they're not, let's see how it goes (I have 2,000 messages already in the approval queue, sigh)

@JustinHawk thanks, didn't know about it - cool! I can see it is free for limited usage, I could give it a try!

Marco