Results 1 to 25 of 30
Hybrid View
-
12-25-2006, 09:59 PM #1Junior Guru
- Join Date
- Jun 2002
- Location
- Long Beach, NY
- Posts
- 211
phpbb registration spam versus vbulletin
I've run phpbb and had to suspend my board due to exhorbinant registration spam, even after patching with counter-measures.
Has anybody been able to compare vBulletin's ability to deal with this issue versus phpbb?
Thanks.
Mike
-
12-26-2006, 12:32 AM #2Web Hosting Master
- Join Date
- Apr 2004
- Location
- Singapore
- Posts
- 620
Vbulletin had image verification tool and some good extensions that you can use to limit the number of posts a new member had to post before spam their url.
-
12-26-2006, 12:57 AM #3Newbie
- Join Date
- Dec 2006
- Posts
- 7
PHPBB has image verification. Do you allow annomous posts? I get a few bot's every now and then, but they do not activate account. I only average 77K hits per month, so maybe your getting more than that and it is the difference.
-
12-26-2006, 12:49 AM #4Junior Guru
- Join Date
- Jun 2002
- Location
- Long Beach, NY
- Posts
- 211
Thanks, but I am specifically referring to registration spam - not posting. phpbb also has image verification.
How does vbulletin do in eliminating *registration* spam?
-
12-26-2006, 09:43 AM #5
VB also has some mods (hacks) that can be used in place of image verification. one in particular that has helped us is a challenge and response system, where you have a question you have to answer (instead of captcha). You get to configure these yourself, making it much harder to guess from board to board, and so far they have to visit to sign up.
Combined that with another hack that places any first post (configurable from 1-infinity) containing keywords or URLs into the moderation queue. Spam is just about history, and quite manageable.
-
12-26-2006, 09:52 AM #6Web Hosting Guru
- Join Date
- Jul 2002
- Posts
- 308
I have a phpBB board that got A LOT of registration spam bots signing up, I used Anti-Spam ACP and a custom CAPTCHA from freecap info here and it stopped the spam bots completely... nothing in the last 30 days where I would have normally had 4/5 bots a day signing up
EDIT: actually it seems like the latest version of Anti-Spam ACP has it's own captcha (image verification) built in, so it might be enough to just install that.Last edited by Zionus; 12-26-2006 at 09:58 AM.
-
12-26-2006, 05:07 PM #7Web Hosting Master
- Join Date
- Dec 2006
- Location
- London
- Posts
- 661
Yes, same here. We get spam on my phpBB board, both from registrations and non-registrations. I've just changed the forum so only registered users can post in, which reduces spam a bit, but not enough.
I'll check out the antispam links - thank you.
Cocodude█ GigaTux, Value Linux Hosting
█ UK, US and Germany based Xen VPS. Reliability is key! Quick support response and 99.9% SLA.
-
12-27-2006, 09:35 AM #8Keep rockin' in the free world
- Join Date
- May 2002
- Location
- Kingston, Ontario
- Posts
- 1,588
I was getting flooded with spam bots on vBulletin with image verification. They still manage to register and post spam.
After applying 2 hacks from vbulletin.org I have no spam at all.
NoSpam!
and
Prevent Spam
both are product addons and easy to install.
-
12-27-2006, 09:57 AM #9Aspiring Evangelist
- Join Date
- Mar 2006
- Posts
- 421
The problem is that the image verification scripts on both vbul and phpbb have been cracked long ago, so that the bots can actually see the letters and numbers on the images, simply because they're the standard images being used all over the web, and therefore it pays off to crack them for the bot owners... If you install another image verification script it should cut down on the bots a lot.
See the links Shrill posted, as they seem to do a great job|| Semi-professional PHP developer || Exams right now, don't I just feel lucky? ||
-
12-29-2006, 11:07 AM #10Web Hosting Master
- Join Date
- Nov 2004
- Location
- Australia
- Posts
- 1,737
Originally Posted by Ks Jeppe
-
12-29-2006, 11:51 AM #11Aspiring Evangelist
- Join Date
- Mar 2006
- Posts
- 421
Originally Posted by brianoz|| Semi-professional PHP developer || Exams right now, don't I just feel lucky? ||
-
12-27-2006, 10:49 AM #12Junior Guru Wannabe
- Join Date
- Sep 2006
- Posts
- 35
I recently switched from phpbb to vbulletin about 3 months ago and haven't had any spambots sign up yet. I was getting them on phpbb about 1-2 day... and would just manually get rid of them.
-
12-29-2006, 12:02 PM #13Newbie
- Join Date
- Dec 2006
- Posts
- 7
I have read about an image verification that allows you to specify the image code. I foget which one it was, but I will chack later today if time permits.
-
12-30-2006, 10:21 PM #14Web Hosting Master
- Join Date
- Apr 2006
- Posts
- 2,204
What alternative captcha methods are there for vBulletin and other popular forum-software?
-
12-31-2006, 03:55 AM #15Junior Guru
- Join Date
- Jun 2005
- Location
- Italy
- Posts
- 188
I completely resolved spam on phpbb with the "Stop Spambot Registration" mod
the idea is fairly simple, there's a message in the registration page that tells not to fill any field, since all the bots fill the www field their registration is denied
the result for me has been 0 new spam bots registered
-
12-31-2006, 02:51 PM #16Newbie
- Join Date
- Dec 2006
- Posts
- 7
Do you have a link?
-
12-31-2006, 03:01 PM #17Disabled
- Join Date
- May 2006
- Posts
- 1,426
http://bbantispam.com/
good mods, they work
-
01-01-2007, 08:32 PM #18Junior Guru
- Join Date
- Jun 2005
- Location
- Italy
- Posts
- 188
just search for "Stop Spambot Registration" in the mods database on phpbb.com
-
01-02-2007, 04:30 AM #19Junior Guru Wannabe
- Join Date
- Jun 2006
- Posts
- 67
http://www.phpbb.com/phpBB/viewtopic.php?t=430710
The above mod stopped all of the bots from registering on my site. Although it is in beta, I have looked over the code and it is stable and has no bugs.ServerTweak Networks, LLC >> ServerTweak.com
Experience the fastest network and superior servers, feel the power of ServerTweak!
Fremont, CA DataCenter | Dedicated Servers | Colocation | Cross Connects HE.net | 1/4 - Full Cab Sales
-
01-03-2007, 12:29 PM #20Junior Guru
- Join Date
- Jun 2002
- Location
- Long Beach, NY
- Posts
- 211
I just implemented this mod and it did not change anything in preventing bot registrations. Is it possible that the bots are able to follow the links in the same way a human does during registration and thus the mod would be ineffective for that scenario?
I will give the alternate image verification a try next.
Thanks for all the great feedback.
-
01-03-2007, 04:51 PM #21Junior Guru
- Join Date
- Aug 2004
- Location
- Mumbai
- Posts
- 183
You may want to check this article to implement a custom captcha for phpBB
-
01-03-2007, 04:57 PM #22Junior Guru
- Join Date
- Jun 2002
- Location
- Long Beach, NY
- Posts
- 211
yes, just tried it. those images are really tricky for anybody to read - i'm testing it and can't even get a test registration done! any way to adjust image distortion?
-
01-03-2007, 05:17 PM #23Junior Guru Wannabe
- Join Date
- Sep 2006
- Posts
- 35
Aren't the images just a bunch of image files? Or does it actaully generate them somehow each time? I always just thought they were a bunch of files and you had to type in what matched the filte that happened to load that time. I would think as these things come out that the bots could just update the filenames/answers and be set again.
-
01-03-2007, 07:22 PM #24Aspiring Evangelist
- Join Date
- Mar 2006
- Posts
- 421
Nah coral.... They're generated randomly from load to load... It's done in PHP via. the GD extension, which is a good way to handle images via PHP..
|| Semi-professional PHP developer || Exams right now, don't I just feel lucky? ||
-
01-03-2007, 09:40 PM #25
Personally, I would go with
C> SMF:
SMF is one of the better options for free boards. I replaced PHPbb with SMF months ago and have seen a drastic reduction in not only spam registrations,b ut in spam posts as well.
SMF also has a phpbb importer which is pretty accurate.
Start there, see if that helps the problemTom Whiting, WHMCS Guru extraordinaire
Linux problems? WHMCS Problems? Give me a shout
Check out my WHMCS Addons