TPU: Detect and Block Spam Registrations 1.6.6

[ForestForTrees]

Thanks!

This is just a temporary thing for us. About 70% of our signups for the last 2 months have been profile spammers from PTCL. I just want to send a strong signal to them so that someone in their team gets the point and takes us off of their list. If this doesn't work, I might even IP ban them. However, once they get the point and I stop getting spammers signing up every night, I'll go back to moderate. We're a very small forum (120K pageviews/month) and get almost no real traffic from Pakistan.

Thanks again!

 

[W1zzard]

Don't bother trying to send signals .. I have some spammers run into +reject around 100 times a day .. even human spammers come back all the time just to get rejected.

 

[eva2000]

yup love the fine grain control this add on has...

I also lock new regos to only being able to post in introductions forums.. spammers who get through don't have anywhere else to post and it usually hits the moderated queue so visitors and members never see spam

 

[Jordyn]

this is great thanks. stops tor nicely. but not torch browser worst luck. or does torch show real IP anyway? still good though

 

[bottiger]

Is it possible to tell if the user in the moderation queue has already verified their email?

 

[W1zzard]

Is it possible to tell if the user in the moderation queue has already verified their email?

Not sure if I understand your question, but all spammers use email addresses that verify and they do verify them. So this can't be used as additional detection method.

 

[bottiger]

Not sure if I understand your question, but all spammers use email addresses that verify and they do verify them. So this can't be used as additional detection method.

When the user pops up in my moderation queue and I approve them, doesn't it completely bypass the email verification check?

I am wondering if it is possible to verify the email first and then put it in the moderation queue, or does that happen already?

 

[W1zzard]

When the user pops up in my moderation queue and I approve them, doesn't it completely bypass the email verification check?

I am wondering if it is possible to verify the email first and then put it in the moderation queue, or does that happen already?

I don't think so, verify email and modq approval are two separate thing. Next time you have a new user, check if he has his email approved, before manual approval, and tell us your results.

 

[bottiger]

I don't think so, verify email and modq approval are two separate thing. Next time you have a new user, check if he has his email approved, before manual approval, and tell us your results.

I don't think they are separate. When someone hasn't had their email verified, their "User State" is "Awaiting Email Confirmation".

This plugin sets that "User State" to "Awaiting Approval" and it is impossible to tell if the person has already verified their email or not.

 

[Xon]

I don't think they are separate. When someone hasn't had their email verified, their "User State" is "Awaiting Email Confirmation".

This plugin sets that "User State" to "Awaiting Approval" and it is impossible to tell if the person has already verified their email or not.

If the registration is pushed into the moderation queue for approval ("Awaiting Approval") they skip email confirmation completely.

There really needs to be an option to 'send confirmation email' when approving users in the moderation queue.

 

[bottiger]

If the registration is pushed into the moderation queue for approval ("Awaiting Approval") they skip email confirmation completely.

There really needs to be an option to 'send confirmation email' when approving users in the moderation queue.

It simply just needs to set the user to awaiting approval after they confirmed their email instead of right after clicking register.

 

[Xon]

It simply just needs to set the user to awaiting approval after they confirmed their email instead of right after clicking register.

"Simply" generally isn't.

This addon just adds more checks to the registration spam check which produce the approved/moderated/rejected result. You are proposing a fairly non-trivial change to the user registration process, which requires extra state tracking and potentially a pile of complexity for injecting that logic into XenForo via an addon.

 

[bottiger]

The concept is quite simple and if Xenforo makes that hard to do, then it is a problem with Xenforo.

Having a button to send a confirmation email could be just as difficult and gives admins more work.

All registrations should be pre-filtered by a confirmation email.

 

[ProCom]

@W1zzard : I have your fantastic script running on 5 of my sites and I LOVE it!!

Unfortunately, one of my sites is getting inundated with spam from Pakistan. The IP's all resolve to PK, so I thought I'd bump up the country blocking value for PK... but it didn't work.

I looked through my "Spam Trigger Log" and the only things in there are the items from the default spam filter in XF. My other sites have TONS of entries from the blocking that TPU: Detect and Block Spam Registrations is doing... but the "Spam Trigger Log" list for this site only has items like:

• Spam phrase matched (online)
• Akismet matched

My sites where TPU is working properly has a bunch of lines like "TPUDetectSpamReg checking:" and a ton of entries / catches

I thought maybe the TPU: Detect and Block Spam Registrations files / install were old, corrupted, or misconfigured on this site, so I:

1. Disabled TPU: Detect and Block Spam Registrations
2. Uninstalled TPU
   
3. Downloaded the newest version of TPU
   
4. Reinstalled TPU
5. Line-by-line configured TPU exactly like it is on my other site where it's running perfectly

... unfortunately, it still seems like it's not working at all. It's as though it's not installed and not activated.

So, what could be causing TPU to not be working on this site, but working on all the others? I'm not getting any server error logs or anything that would point to why it's not working.

Thanks in advance for any help you can provide!

 

[Xon]

@ProCom Could you post an example of the spam trigger log entry which should have been blocked that wasn't?

 

[ProCom]

Hey @Xon , thanks for the quick reply!

I think that's actually part of the problem... there aren't any entries in the "Spam Trigger Log" that are from TPU. It's as though the application isn't installed or activated.

I thought removing it and reinstalling the newest version would do the trick, but nothing I've done has been able to get it to function like it is on my other 4 sites (all on the same server, same xf version, etc.)

 

[Xon]

Hey @Xon , thanks for the quick reply!

I think that's actually part of the problem... there aren't any entries in the "Spam Trigger Log" that are from TPU. It's as though the application isn't installed or activated.

I thought removing it and reinstalling the newest version would do the trick, but nothing I've done has been able to get it to function like it is on my other 4 sites (all on the same server, same xf version, etc.)

Do you have tapatalk or something providing non-standard registration?

Otherwise can you make sure verbose mode is enabled? Or enable "Debug Mode" option for this addon (which will spit out a *lot* more data)?

 

[ProCom]

Xon, I appreciate the help!

I don't think they are coming from tapatalk or another bypass route, but I'll double check.

I've had "Debug" on for a week and just now turned on "Verbose". Debug isn't providing any data, hopefully Verbose will.

Here is the Spam Trigger Log for the site where TPU isn't working. Notice the other spam measures are working, but nothing from TPU:




and here it is for the site where it is working (TPU is doing a great job!):

 

[Xon]

I believe you need verbose to on to get that sort of per-rule reporting.

 

[ProCom]

Ok, I've had "Verbose" on for a few days, and still nothing at all

It's as though the plugin isn't installed, turned on, etc., but it's installed, active, and I've configured it exactly the same as my other sites where it is working.

Uninstalling and reinstalling don't seem to change anything. I don't get any errors or anything. I have no idea how to troubleshoot this.

Any ideas or suggestions?