Spam is getting ridiculous.

DarkGizmo

DarkGizmo

Well-known member
I noticed i've been getting 2-3 spambots per day now. I've tried various forms of Captcha. For the longest time I was using the Q&A form of Captcha.

What can I do to fight these bots? Money is a bit tight right now and i'm not in a position to pay for any additional add-ons but it's something to consider for the future, but for right now, what can be done to combat these bots? It's really frustrating.
 
Reason I ask is if its a dedicated or VPS running CSF then see my post here

xenforo.com

Block spam members

Hi there My Google security settings, e-mail verification are all active, but 2-3 members spam every day on the forum site and I am very tired of deleting them. Is there any way to block these? Thanks
xenforo.com xenforo.com

And also take a look at these

xenforo.com

Stop Forum Spam

So, you wants to assassinate those spammers before they get through to spam your site? I know I do. So here, I present you with a simple integration with Stop Forum Spam. As of right now, it is strictly on registration; but, I plan on integrating it with the Spam Arsenal Kier and Mike have...
xenforo.com xenforo.com

And this one - $8 for the year -

https://cleantalk.org
https://cleantalk.org/help/install-xenforo
 
I am using questions and answers. Make them specific for your niche.

Also check out this add-on :
xenforo.com

[OzzModz] Registration Spaminator Stop Spam Bot Registrations

There is a 10% tax added to our products. We do not offer invoices, you need to use your PayPal Receipt for your accounting or VAT needs. Tax will be added at checkout. This addon is another tool in fighting spam bot registrations at your forum...
xenforo.com xenforo.com
 
Hmm. I'll have to take a look into these.....I know @Ozzy47 offers some stuff, but again, money's a bit tight so I can't go dropping $50 on an add-on right now.

Edit: I was using question & answer, but they were still getting through.
 
duderuud said:
I am using questions and answers. Make them specific for your niche.

Also check out this add-on :
xenforo.com

[OzzModz] Registration Spaminator Stop Spam Bot Registrations

There is a 10% tax added to our products. We do not offer invoices, you need to use your PayPal Receipt for your accounting or VAT needs. Tax will be added at checkout. This addon is another tool in fighting spam bot registrations at your forum...
xenforo.com xenforo.com
Click to expand...
Whenever I have run into a new rush of it, changing the Q&A works. The bots can figure out some questions especially if you put the answer in the question as some do.
 
If those spammers use spam like emails, this works wonderfully by @Ozzy47

xenforo.com

[OzzModz] Block Registrations With Spam Like Email Addresses

This is a port of an addon I made for vBulletin back in September of 2014 The settings for the mod can be found under, [OzzModz] Block Registrations With Spam Like Email Addresses Note: The error message they see when they exceed the maximum...
xenforo.com xenforo.com

I used to get 10-15 registrations daily and not anymore.

Or, if they are from a specific country, like Russia, then this works also great by @Sim :

xenforo.com

Geoblock Registration

This XenForo 2.x addon provides Geoblocking capabilities for user registration. You can set allowed and denied lists for countries based on the IP address a user registers from - and optionally force users from non-approved countries into the...
xenforo.com xenforo.com


If money is tight, those 2 addons are recommended.
 
What we've noticed over the years is changes in approach in the spamosphere. First it was total human operations. They sign up and then make the posts, and get paid. The automated spam programs got better and also less expensive - and there were more of them - so then we saw a period of almost total automation - bot program registers then posts, and human operators were relatively rare. But the improvement in captchas, Q&A, and etc has it now mostly a hybrid operation: Humans register, then hand off the accounts to the botnet and get paid, then the botnet uses automation to log in and make the spam posts.

One way of stopping this is our Login Spaminator. The bot programs can't log in. This also is effective for "sleeper" spam accounts that registered days, weeks, months and even years ago.

Need as many good arrows in your quiver as you can get, to effectively stop spam today. Including use of spam phrases to keep anything that gets through, off your open boards.
 
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If you are using CloudFlare, I would recommend forcing the login/register pages to not be overlap (a few simple template edits) and using page rules to force the /login/ and /register paths to be under higher security than the rest of the site.

I do have a paid add-on, and haven't really needed to add much additional countermeasures over the years. Is more of a toolkit for fingerprinting and blocking bad actors on signup. Fingerprinting entire ISPs (by ASN, or geoip/country) is a ridiculously effective way to exclude a lot of low-effort spammers.

xenforo.com

Signup abuse detection and blocking

From (simple) multiple accounts detection to isp/connection fingerprinting with score-based moderating/rejecting logic. These are very effective low-hanging fruit at reducing spam. Supports migration configuration from the following XF1 add-ons...
xenforo.com xenforo.com

This add-on also has a URL allow/moderate/deny list by domain, with configurable allow-by-default or deny-by-default policy. This is also fairly effective.
 
Xon said:
If you are using CloudFlare, I would recommend forcing the login/register pages to not be overlap (a few simple template edits) and using page rules to force the /login/ and /register paths to be under higher security than the rest of the site.

I do have a paid add-on, and haven't really needed to add much additional countermeasures over the years. Is more of a toolkit for fingerprinting and blocking bad actors on signup. Fingerprinting entire ISPs (by ASN, or geoip/country) is a ridiculously effective way to exclude a lot of low-effort spammers.

xenforo.com

Signup abuse detection and blocking

From (simple) multiple accounts detection to isp/connection fingerprinting with score-based moderating/rejecting logic. These are very effective low-hanging fruit at reducing spam. Supports migration configuration from the following XF1 add-ons...
xenforo.com xenforo.com

This add-on also has a URL allow/moderate/deny list by domain, with configurable allow-by-default or deny-by-default policy. This is also fairly effective.
Click to expand...
This has basically cut down the majority of spam I was getting (20-30 per day at one point), and also has helped with people trying to bypass account bans about 80% of the time.

One of the most valuable addons I've purchased (and I should probably leave this as a review 🤣).

EDIT: Copy paste review for the win.
 
sbj said:
If those spammers use spam like emails, this works wonderfully by @Ozzy47

xenforo.com

[OzzModz] Block Registrations With Spam Like Email Addresses

This is a port of an addon I made for vBulletin back in September of 2014 The settings for the mod can be found under, [OzzModz] Block Registrations With Spam Like Email Addresses Note: The error message they see when they exceed the maximum...
xenforo.com xenforo.com

I used to get 10-15 registrations daily and not anymore.

Or, if they are from a specific country, like Russia, then this works also great by @Sim :

xenforo.com

Geoblock Registration

This XenForo 2.x addon provides Geoblocking capabilities for user registration. You can set allowed and denied lists for countries based on the IP address a user registers from - and optionally force users from non-approved countries into the...
xenforo.com xenforo.com


If money is tight, those 2 addons are recommended.
Click to expand...
Added both. We'll see how this goes, thanks! :)
 
Currently, I use https://xenforo.com/community/resou...trations-with-spam-like-email-addresses.8483/, and it's blocking all bots effectively. It will not block human spammers, but you'll have peace of mind with bots.

Occasionally we get a "pack" of human spammers, but squash them asap. We always use the Spam cleaner, so the system have them logged for any further attacks. Also, we don't allow profile editing unless they have at least on post on the forum (to prevent spamming profiles with advertising).
 
/admin.php?options/groups/spam/

throw this in spam phrases option

Code: 
/^\[url.*\[\/url\]$/si
/^http\S+$/si
/\[url=("|')?([^"'\]]+)("|')?\].*\[url\]\2\[/si
/\[url=("|')?([^"'\]]+)("|')?\].*\[url=("|')?\2("|')?\]/si
/^https?:\/\/\S+\n/si

stopped 90% of spam getting in for me.
 
briansol said:
/admin.php?options/groups/spam/

throw this in spam phrases option

Code: 
/^\[url.*\[\/url\]$/si
/^http\S+$/si
/\[url=("|')?([^"'\]]+)("|')?\].*\[url\]\2\[/si
/\[url=("|')?([^"'\]]+)("|')?\].*\[url=("|')?\2("|')?\]/si
/^https?:\/\/\S+\n/si

stopped 90% of spam getting in for me.
Click to expand...
Wouldn't that block the use of URL's in posts?

SO the blocking of countries using Geolock add-on doesn't seem to work......maybe i've got the wrong API key in there, but I got spammers from India registering and India (IN) was one of the codes i banned.
 
DarkGizmo said:
It'd block usage of URL's for everyone, right? or just the main registered users group?
Click to expand...
The "Maximum messages to check for spam" option controls who is spam-checked. That option defaults to checking the first 5 posts with the spam-check system
 
I've done that, thanks @Xon , I've also changed to hCaptcha to see if that helps combat spam as a lot of sites i've seen use this method.
 
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