We've hit the big time, the forum was spammed

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Expand view Topic review: We've hit the big time, the forum was spammed

Re: We've hit the big time, the forum was spammed

by jimimck » Thu Feb 25, 2016 1:25 am

Sounds good thanks Tomas. I got one of those pm's and expect they won't take the time to post five times to try that again.

Mine was in Russian too, so I couldn't even read the spam!

Re: We've hit the big time, the forum was spammed

by Mr. Rabbit Trick » Wed Feb 24, 2016 11:15 pm

The "new users group" might keep them away. Hopefully.

Re: We've hit the big time, the forum was spammed

by TheCollector » Wed Feb 24, 2016 1:31 pm

Ok, for the second time in a month or so we've been hit with a spammer that, after registering decided to either PM or email members directly. The first time this happened I canceled the ability for everyone to send mass PM's to the group. ( Can't say I've ever needed to do that anyway.)

Seems like this time the person was individually doing the PM's. So I've created a "new users group" to be the default when new people sign up. It takes away the ability to PM or Email anyone else on the board until you have 5 messages posted.... We'll see how that works.

There are further measures I can take if nessisary but at some point it gets invonvenient for new users and myself to administer them. For now we'll see how this latest round of "security enhancements" holds up. If you get any spam from the forums please let me know right away!

Re: We've hit the big time, the forum was spammed

by TheCollector » Sat Feb 06, 2016 9:13 am

Hey guys, we got hit by our first spammer in quite some time. I've deleted his account, posts, and banned the IP range. Hopefully that'll be the end of it. I see he somehow also PM'd forum members with the same generic spam message...that's new, it's always been limited to just posts on the forum before.

I found a settings that lets registered users send PM's to an unlimited amount of other registered users and changed it to allowing a maximum of 3 people at once. If you guys use PM for more than 3 people at once, let me know and we can talk about what an appropriate number would be....But that should stop any more mass PM's from coming across.

Likely upgrading to the latest release wouldn't hurt. Ill look into that.

Re: We've hit the big time, the forum was spammed

by TheCollector » Fri Feb 06, 2015 8:12 am

arham wrote:Hey
You have guest posting enabled - disable this for every from from the acp->forums->permissions (or something like that) - ensure guests only have read only access (or no access) and no more than that.
Oh, thanks! that must have switched during one of the phpbb back end upgrades. I'll get that locked down.

EDIT: Just took a look, they were all locked down to read only for guests, except for this technical issues section. That's on purpose so folks can post if they're having problems registering/seeing the site, etc.

Re: We've hit the big time, the forum was spammed

by arham » Thu Feb 05, 2015 8:44 pm

Hey
You have guest posting enabled - disable this for every from from the acp->forums->permisions (or something like that) - ensure guests only have read only access (or no access) and no more than that.

Re: We've hit the big time, the forum was spammed

by The_Blight » Tue Apr 21, 2009 3:11 am

Well, I'm happy I signed up before this reworking of the signup process...

Re: We've hit the big time, the forum was spammed

by TheCollector » Thu Apr 16, 2009 7:22 am

Another day another spammer.... Looks like I may have to go in and remove all the already inactive accounts and assume they're spammers that will eventually get around to activating and then spamming the board.

I hesitate to do that, as there may be actual users who have registered but never posted.... I'll have to see if they show up as "inactive" as well.

Re: We've hit the big time, the forum was spammed

by jhanic » Thu Apr 16, 2009 4:28 am

I doubt any legitimate user will mind too much if they have to wait for your approval.

I HATE SPAMMERS!

John

Re: We've hit the big time, the forum was spammed

by TheCollector » Wed Apr 15, 2009 7:44 am

OK the smaller security measure wasn't working, so now I'm temporarily setting the new user registration to admin approval.

If these spammers are taking the time out to create a unique e-mail and going back to activiate it, I'm not 100% sure I'll be able to filter out the stuff effectivly but we'll see. The downside is new people will have to wait for my approval to sign up.

But I think it's either that or be spammed.

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