TPU: Detect and Block Spam Registrations 1.6.6

[W1zzard]

W1zzard submitted a new resource:

TPU: Detect and Block Spam Registrations - Score based tests to detect spammers upon registering

This addon uses custom detection methods to identify automated and manual registrations that are looking to spam your forum.

All rules are score based and cumulative. So, each rule may increase or lower the total score, which at the end, is evaluated to decide whether to accept, moderate or reject a registration.

Detection results are stored in the spam trigger log of XF 1.3.

We've been running this addon in production for a few weeks now and it has rejected over 10k registrations,...

Read more about this resource...

 

[rdn]

Looks promising

 

[BamBam]

Yep, sounds very good. And its free, and without Copyright, thats also great. But i am waiting for some Feedbacks from other Members.

 

[W1zzard]

If you get an error "Fatal Error: Call to undefined function socket_create()" your PHP installation doesn't have the sockets extension (most installations should have it). This feature is required for the "open TCP ports" detection feature, to disable it just remove all rules from that field in options.

 

[W1zzard]

W1zzard updated TPU: Detect and Block Spam Registrations with a new update entry:

New feature and bugfixes

• Added wildcard * to IP country match, so you can blacklist all countries, and then whitelist few countries by giving them a negative score
• Added check if PHP socket functions are available
• Fixed TOR exit node IP detection not working on IIS

Read the rest of this update entry...

 

[psx]

W1zzard updated TPU: Detect and Block Spam Registrations with a new update entry:

New feature and bugfixes



Read the rest of this update entry...

Can it stop most proxies? I can see TOR which is great as most spammers use it.

 

[W1zzard]

Can it stop most proxies? I can see TOR which is great as most spammers use it.

It will detect most proxy/VPN ISPs via the "AS" rules , if you give a higher score to those you can block most proxy/VPN easily.

 

[AWS]

This is a great spam deterrent. I just installed it and it is catching things that others never did. I was using IIS rewrite rules to block countries and by using this I no longer need those rules. For the countries I want to block I just gave them the highest score to make sure they get denied.

 

[Mouth]

After installing this addon we even turned off the captcha, because it just makes it difficult for humans to register, and really doesn't stop the bots. This addon does.

Doesn't turning off captcha also mean that it is off for the Contact Us page? And since this addon doesn't appear to action the Contact Us page, you're leaving it open for spammers. On the couple of test occasions I've turned off captcha ( /admin.php?options/list/usersAndRegistration ), I immediately get spam from Contact Us.

 

[W1zzard]

Doesn't turning off captcha also mean that it is off for the Contact Us page? And since this addon doesn't appear to action the Contact Us page, you're leaving it open for spammers. On the couple of test occasions I've turned off captcha ( /admin.php?options/list/usersAndRegistration ), I immediately get spam from Contact Us.

Yeah same here, and there seems to be no way to selectively enable the captcha for contact us. But deleting a few emails manually is not such a big deal. I'll look into making an addon to re-enable the captcha for contact us

edit: http://xenforo.com/community/resources/tpu-disable-captcha-for-registration-only.2993/

 

[ProCom]

I'm excited to test this out!

A quick question: Do any of the existing / xf core "Spam Management" settings need to be changed or disabled when this addon is installed? For example, will there be some collisions if "Stop Forum Spam" is enabled in both places and the settings for when a registration is moderated / rejected are set differently in the core "Spam Management" and this addon?

 

[W1zzard]

No, everything should still work. But for production use it's best to just turn off the XenForo anti spam measures, because this addon can do what they do, and more, with more fine grained control.

If Xenforo rejects/moderates the registration, the addon can only pick the stronger measure. ie. it's not possible that XenForo rejects and this addon allows and the registration ends up allowed.

 

[ProCom]

Ok, thanks!

BTW, the granularity is awesome! Just since I posted above it has stopped 4 registrations that would have gone into my moderation queue before.

 

[sylvain]

I installed this addon few days ago, easy to configure and it works perfectly.

Definitively a must have addon !

 

[BamBam]

No, everything should still work. But for production use it's best to just turn off the XenForo anti spam measures, because this addon can do what they do, and more, with more fine grained control.

If Xenforo rejects/moderates the registration, the addon can only pick the stronger measure. ie. it's not possible that XenForo rejects and this addon allows and the registration ends up allowed.

I have installed your Addon & turned off the XenForo StopForumSpam + DNS Blocklist. Is this ok now? Or should i turn off other things too?

 

[W1zzard]

Yup, this should be fine now.

 

[W1zzard]

W1zzard updated TPU: Detect and Block Spam Registrations with a new update entry:

New features and bugfixes

- Added ability to override scoring and directly pick an action (helps with those indian spammers)
- Added a third action that accepts new users but moderates all their new posts until a certain (approved) post count is reached
- Added tab to user panel in admincp to view registration log (until the entry is deleted from spam trigger log automatically by XenForo)
- Fixed strict mode warnings

Read the rest of this update entry...

 

[W1zzard]

Quick explanation regarding the new moderate posts rule. In order to block chinese and indian spammers who seem to be registering completely manually I'm using the following rules:

+1|CN
+1|IN
+1|PK
+1|TH
+1|VN
+1|PH
+1|VE
+1|UA
+1|RU
moderateposts|CN
moderateposts|IN
moderateposts|PK
moderateposts|TH
moderateposts|PH

Make sure to leave the normal scoring in place (+1 in my example), so that the country is still taken into account to possibly reach the "reject" score

 

[Xon]

I have a feature request;

Can the Registration Log include any match Akismet spam check records for a User?

 

[W1zzard]

From what I understand, Akismet needs an actual post to be invoked, it won't just work on a registration alone?