About: This modification will allow you to check your users (via the "Edit User" function in the Control Panel) and new signups (via the "Registration Queue") against the Stop Forum Spam databases.
When a spammer is identified a Red/Bold ! will display next to the field, clicking this ! will allow you to view the associated data on Stop Forum Spam.
As of v0.3 we're assuming that you have an API key and you want to submit spam; you'll likely want to put your API key in (both) the language files (admin/public) when you upload them to your server.
Changelog: v0.1 - Initial Build v0.2 - Fixed an issue with users having 0 posts throwing an error in the CP on the Edit User screen. v0.3 - Overhauled the addon making it a true modification with Language File support. Also added it so that users triggering the signup check will be automatically submitted to Stop Forum Spam. v0.4 - I believe I fixed the "downtime" issues, whereby if the validation server is down, people where unable to register. v0.5 - The script will now show a notice when the Stop Forum Spam API is down and should no longer make pages inaccessible.
NOTE: StopForumSpam.com only allows 5k10k 20k lookups per day; thus, you should refrain from attempting to implement this code on pages which would quickly hit this limit (such as adding searches for all types of data on the search users page).
API Key: Go here and sign up on their forums, then go here once logged in and generate a key for "yourdomain.tld". This API key needs to be added to both of the language files in the modification archive (one in the "english" folder, and its subfolder of "admin").
Just an FYI regarding the new "auto submission" feature when an email is matched; I initially wanted to do this for IP matching as well, but figured that since most ISP's divvy a dynamic IP that it wasn't really worthwhile to auto submit for them at this time, but it's totally doable if you'd like to.
Just heard from Paul at Stop Forum Spam and not only have they updated their limit to 10k from when I wrote up the initial mod, they upped the limit again to 20k!
So, I'll be adding some information on adding the lookup to the member manage listing itself for those of you who'd like to use it. Just be mindful of the 20k limit, if you have a ton of members you still might not want to run it...
I just implemented it - thanks to Gizmo for it. We have just been deluged with spammers.
I just did a check of the last set of registrations.
valid - 76 spammers - 68
So nearly half of all incoming registrations were going to start spamming us. This will make it much easier to stop them.
For some reason I am not seeing any note of their spam status on the main registration queue page. I have to click on their name to get to the detail page - and on that page I do see the red exclamation point by the email address or IP address (or usually both) to show they are a spammer.
Any thoughts on why I don't see that detail on the main registration queue page? I did make all the changes as instructed (or at least I thought I did).
While I was in viewing the source of the registration queue page I noticed that the code to make the "approve / decline" radio buttons had a bug - it was adding slashes before the two quotes around the checked default button for "no change". So I removed them in my code. You might want to check that that is in the master code.
1) known Spammers are REJECTED and can't register in the Forum. (from a pool of 21 million!!! Wow)....
Yes.
Originally Posted by Bill B
2) So how does the Edit USER page show a spammer? or why?[/url] A red ! is shown next to the field with offending data; why? because it'd be useful there?
[quote=Bill B]3) or how does a USER Registration QUEUE work? How does a Spammer make it that far?
Users won't make it there, if they're flagged they won't even see the registration screen. Adding code elsewhere isn't recommended as you only get so many lookups per day, and on a busy board it'll end up hitting this limit if added to more sections than the default code supplied.
I'm happy to report that I just rolled the code in on my wineintro.com forum and it seems to be working smoothly there too. So that's two forums now running the code and seeing a reduction in spammers.
I only got one or two a week in this forum - fairly low traffic - but still every bit helps.
Just finished v0.5 which is a pretty big deal when you find the announcement when the new ubb comes out...
v0.5 - The script will now show a notice when Stop Forum Spam is down and should no longer make pages inaccessible.Option to report a spammer to the database.
There should be an update to the script sometime this week to add in access to the load balancing server at Stop Forum Spam; it does not work right now but I've got the mod updated to reflect it for testing.
I downloaded v0.5 and was cruising along installing the mod when I got to:
In templates/default/admin/membermanage.tmpl Find: for($i=0;$i unfortunately, this line does not exist in my membermanage.tmpl, the only place //UBBTREMARK exists in this file is at the top
// Script Version 7.5.6
I am not a coder, but I have handled many mods and feel comfortable doing this, but am I missing something?
I have added the API key to the two language files, but I get a red bar with a "Cannot Connect to the Stop Forum Spam API. " in the registration queue. I am getting the red exclamation marks next to the email and IP numbers which mean it must be connecting. A couple of question:
1. Why am I getting the message that it can't connect with SFS and yet the exclamation marks are showing?
2. How can I delete the spammers without them knowing that I did it?
3. Should I report the spammers in the Member information page even though the registration queue says it can not connect to SFS API?
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