PHPBB2 Script for Spammers?

[Jernet]

My forum has recently been over-run with sign-up spammers.

Even tho I set it that each signup has to click an email confimation link, and then they need to be approved by me, I am getting pounded....

I can tell it is the same few people signing up by their usernames and style.

I had to remove the memberlist.php page from view so I dont give them free exposure to their sites.

After all this, I have protected my forum from the spammers, but I still have the burden of having to manually go in and delete these aholes from the memberlist in the admin, and since there are starting to be way too many, it is very annoying and time consuming.

To get to my question.....I am looking for a script that captures users ip address upon signup, so that way I can start banning their ip addresses.

The way phpbb is setup, is that you cannot get a users ip address until they actually post something. I dont want it to get this far.

Anyody have or know of such a script? Thanks.

[Rascagua]

I dont know of that exact tool your looking for but...

http://www.phpbbsmith.com/downloads/...pam-tools.html

I can install them for you for a small fee if you like.

oh and this may be helpful too

http://www.phpbbhacks.com/forums/sto...s-vt67553.html

spammers are a mess today..

[Jernet]

Thanks. The 'Visual Confirmation on New Posters' is very good for spambots, but I believe I am dealing with live people here, so this won't help ;0(

[kokopelli]

When I still had some PhPBB forums, one of the things I did in addition to some other anti-spam measures, was block a range of email addresses. I can let you have my old list if interested.

[Rascagua]

but I believe I am dealing with live people here,

wow... people sure know how to waste their life online...

[Acro]

Install this toolkit, makes life easier.
http://starfoxtj.no-ip.com/phpbb/toolkit/

[Bender]

I have the same problem with both phpbb and VB

[Jernet]

thanks guys. looking into a few things...

i have been reading a lot of these spammers have the intention on getting their sites ranked quickly and highly at search engines.

the memberlist.php page is the culprit. if a spammer uses a user name that starts with a character like "#", they will always be on the first page of the memberlist.php. If you have a high pr homepage, good chance that the memberlist.php page will have good pr, so they will have a bunch of high pr one way links pointing to their sites....

for anybody else having this trouble, you might want to delete that page, or at least make it invisible. You then want to exclude that page in your robots.txt file so the search engines wont crawl it. At least you won't be giving these jerks free traffic and links...

I am coming to the conclusion that with all of the things I have done, none of my real members ever know these spammers exist, and will never visit their sites, because until they are approved by me as the admin, they can never post....

The main thing, which may actually be a plus, is that they jack the member count up. This could be good for resale lol....

here is what I have in my robots.txt file:

User-agent: *
Disallow: /posting
Disallow: /profile.php
Disallow: /groupcp
Disallow: /login
Disallow: /privmsg
Disallow: /memberlist.php

[Acro]

I own a virtually "dead" domain forum, DomainGator.com - in fact, it's the 2nd oldest public domain forum after DNF

I get about 10 signups a day - all from spammers. Using the Toolkit I mentioned (forum runs on phpBB) it takes me a few seconds to mass delete those pests.

[Jernet]

I own a virtually "dead" domain forum, DomainGator.com - in fact, it's the 2nd oldest public domain forum after DNF

I get about 10 signups a day - all from spammers. Using the Toolkit I mentioned (forum runs on phpBB) it takes me a few seconds to mass delete those pests.

I had read about the toolkit before. I think I will definately hook it up. I was hacked once or twice before too, so this will be great for that purpose as well.

[Acro]

Let's face it, phpBB has had severe holes in the past but it's free.

[Jernet]

Let's face it, phpBB has had severe holes in the past but it's free.

exactly. thats why i will never badmouth it. there is a ton of time and effort put into it, so we could freely use it. i always appreciate free cms, especially phpbb and wordpress. i always hope for improvements, but i hate when people complain about them as a whole. if you dont like it, you have two options:

1) dont use it
2) fix it your self


i usually choose number 2 lol