Spammer

[Chromenut]

When you are banning are you only banning on user name or are you banning on IP? And if on IP, are you banning an IP range, or just the one they recently used? I monitor 11 forums today, 5 of my own and 6 for friends, and banning a name, email or single IP never works.

[CREWZIN]

07Cruiser

I'm sure there is and appreciate what your doing but it's not my site and don't think I'd be able to download anything since I don't have permission to do any admin work.

Chromenut,

I don't know if it's only a single IP. One of the other moderators once banned a spammer by banning the whole post and one of our members had posted on that thread. He was then banned from the forum along with the spammer. The user couldn't get back on no matter what he tried until the moderator came back a couple weeks later (after I sent him a note) and reversed the ban.

[CREWZIN]

Chromenut,

Got your message and banned and deleted the latest spammer. Only takes 10 seconds to ban and another 10 to get rid of 1 or a bunch of posts. It's just the one spammer that i talked about in my first post that I wasn't able to ban. I could get rid of the posts, but the use name wouldn't ban. Somehow, "they" had a way of blocking my banning.

[Chromenut]

That's not it. You just proved to me that you're either blocking their ID, email or single IP. I have an IP rollover package on my computers here at home. They rotate IP addresses on my home domain to keep hackers from getting onto my computers. They'd have to be damn good to get past my router and it's firewall, but if they did they'd not be able to hold onto a computer long enough to do any damage.

Same thing works for spammers. They rotate their IPs to confuse sites that only ban in a single IP. Almost all sites ban the IP of the user only, not the IP group. If I have a spammer who continues to abuse me, I go in and ban their IP group.

For instance, and I'm totally making up these IP's so no one get mad at me: Spammer shows up, logs into the system, JonDoe1 is his user ID, his IP is 167.128.4.1. Leaves his garbage and filth on your system. You click the ban button and what happens? Bans user, email and that one IP.

Now, I get pissed cause the jacka$$ won't go away, he's hungry and likes my site cause it's got lots of traffic. I go into the ban list and ban this IP: 167.128.4.*. That means that IP 167.128.4.1 thru 167.128.4.999 is now banned! The spammers roll over the last digits as long as they can get away with it. Sometimes I have to go past the hundred's group and into the thousand's group and ban 137.128.* to get rid of the really obnoxious spammers. Right now that's mostly Russia, Hungary and Poland. They seem to really be hot at the moment. Last summar it was the Arab countries.

Anyway, you may not have authority to go to that next level. They really should or you should copy down the IP's you're banning and get the Admin to do a ban list. This forum package, along with most of them, keeps a ban list that the Admins can access. I usually go through that about once every 3 or 4 months to see if I have any consecutive IP's showing up so I can ban the next higher range.

Anyway, good luck to you on that. If you need any help, feel free to drop me a line, I do this stuff as a hobby and it's pretty much taking up all my free time that I'm not spending on my PT.

[808]

Damn Chromenut, you know a lot about a lot! I just read the other thread in the Wheels & Suspension Section and you're pretty clear on explaining yourself. I get drawn into your posts and also Candyman's!

I'm posting in a Non-PT Discussion thread and I'm taking it seriously lol.

[Chromenut]

Thank you for the kind words. Part of my small OCD complex, or so my wife says. I read the book, actually I pretty much read everything, before I make a move. We had our 62" flatscreen TV delivered and setup by professionals and I wouldn't let her turn it on until I read the entire owner's manual! lol... So I'm a total geek, and have a problem where what goes in my brain just won't come out. I memorize too much stuff. So I know a little bit about a lot of stuff, and when someone asks a question, like on how to correctly set your parking brake, well I break out the book and read it, then research it on the internet, find all I can, then come back and give an answer that sounds plausible to me....lol....

Anyway, thanks for the words, it's like therapy coming to these forums, and I'm now a very regurlar on 4 PT Cruiser forums: here, PTCrew, PTEnthusiasts, and PT Cruiser Network. Somebody asks a question I find interesting, I go total geek on it....hahahahahaha.... I gotta seek therapy....

[ChefTank]

Or we could go about it the other way... We have thier ip and can "force" confrence... I got a worm... I'm just sayin... If it makes it to that.




Josh

[PTHelga]

The horse forum that I moderate with last system update, when we ban the Spammer, it nails their IP address, too. Before, it was only banning their email address, which is very ineffective, as Chromenut was explaining. We keep a log of the banned IP addresses, email and whatever personal info they may have put on the forum in case it was also a member who got too nasty, was a worm or something of that nature, and may try to come back with a new name.

[Chromenut]

I've not used Vbulletin in a long time and maybe it doesn't have some of the more aggressive characteristics as far as security as some of the other forum software out there. I just put a forum together using the newest phpBB and ialmost immediately went right back to SMF as it just is so much easier to maintain, has so much more horsepower, and is way more secure than most forum software. That is all my opinion, vbulletin could be just as good, but from my perspective - as in a person who maintains 11 blogs and 15 forums - SMF beats the pants off the competition.

[PTHelga]

Chromenut, that is a lot to keep track of. *whistles*