Wowza Community

Forum Suggestion: [GlowHost] Spam-O-Matic vBulletin Plugin.

Good Morning all, i notice we have started to get an influx of Spam bots on the forum, as a fello vB Admnistrator i would like to suggest that the site Admin/tech’s add the following module addon to the site, I personaly have had great success using this addon, I have found that with little maintenance and settings tweaking here and there it effectivly reduces the spam being posted on my Board to zero, thus freeing up my Administration and Moderation teams time to focus else where.

[GlowHost] Spam-O-Matic - Spam Firewall stops forum spam

Version: 2.1.2

Description:

About Spam-O-Matic 2.x:

Spam-O-Matic 2.x (SOM) is a spam firewall for your vBulletin Forums version 4.x and later. It prevents known spammers from registering on your forums. If they can’t register, they can’t spam!

Languages Packs Available

English

German - Courtesy of Alex@bulletin (included in zip)

Romanian - Courtesy of Teascu Dorin’s (included in zip)

Spanish - Courtesy of vbluis (included in zip)

How it Works

This data responsible for blocking user registrations comes from the stopforumspam.com (SFS) spammer database. After the user who is trying to register passes the built-in vBulletin registration checks which you have configured in your vBulletin settings, SOM then checks the SFS database to see if the IP, username, or email address that the user is trying to register with has been recently tagged as a known spam source on other forums around the Internet. Also can be configured to check the Akismet service for known comment spam.

This is without a doubt, one of the most important mods that you will be using on your forum.

Other Notable Stuff

It also does a ton of other cool stuff like moderating posts automatically if the post is found in the Akismet database, or if it contains words on your “Bad Words” keyword list which can be configured within the mod itself.

The mod WORKS with vBulletin’s new Facebook integration.

This module works with all of the Facebook functions that are built into the vB4 series.

Similar mods do not handle Facebook integration completely.

This module has the ability to submit new spammer details to the StopForumSpam or Akismet databases automatically, all without any new templates or manual template modifications!

This means other forums that are running Spam-O-Matic will not have the same spammer on their forums if you have (automatically) reported the spammer to the SFS database.

Just install the product in the product manager, upload a few files, configure the system and you are done. (Estimated time: 5-10 minutes)

Feature List:

  • Optional Public Statistics. Show off to the world how many bad guys you have automatically prevented from posting junk on your forum.

  • Auto-Moderation moderates posts that have links, bad words, and other configurable settings.

  • Auto-Moderation ignores your RSS posts.

  • Registration / Denial Logs available from Admincp > Statistics and Logs

  • Optional “Newbies” Manager! After registration, newly registered users can be placed in a “Newbies” group which has more limited permissions as compared to your regular “Registered Users” group. Newbies will graduate to your Registered Users group based on your required post count settings.

  • Auto-Submit Spammers from the moderation tools menu on each postbit.

  • Remove Posts, threads, PMs, Calendar Events from your spammer in one easy wizard. No double logins needed.

  • Shows other users who signed up with the same IP. (Sleeping Spammers)

  • Optional Affiliate System

  • ~50 customizable settings to fine-tune Spam-O-Matic to your exact needs.

    A) StopForumSpam:

    The StopForumSpam Module lets you:

  • Check a registrant’s IP address.

  • Check a registrant’s email address.

  • Check a registrants Username.

  • Disable or enable any of the above checks.

  • Block and log, or, allow and log known spammers.

  • All registration attempts are logged for your viewing pleasure.

  • Several other performance tuning options

    If a user (or bot) tries to register on your forum and they pass the built-in vBulletin registration system. (Human verification, email verification, etc), their registration details are then passed to the Spam-O-Matic firewall for further checking.

    NOTE: You should use some sort of human verification checking in vBulletin’s built-in options to limit the number of requests to the already heavily-loaded StopForumSpam database servers. This will also prevent additional load because SOM will not have to do anything if the bot/spammer fails preliminary registration validation which is built-into vBulletin itself.

    It is completely invisible to humans who are registering that this process is taking place. Bots are stopped dead in their tracks.

    If a spammer is able to sneak past the first line of defense, and manages to post, then there are secondary, tertiary, and, uh…4th level protections too!

    B) Auto-Moderation:

    Auto Moderation lets you:

  • Define how many URLs a new member can post before being sent to moderation.

  • Define keywords that will send a post to Auto-moderation

  • Define minimum post count to avoid Auto-moderation.

  • Excludes admin and moderators from Auto-moderation.

  • Completely disable Auto-moderation if you don’t want it.

    C) Akismet Service

    Spammers that make it past the StopForumSpam and Auto-Moderation will be checked against the Akismet service. If they manage to make a post, and then are found on Akismet, they can be auto-moderated.

    The Akismet settings let you:

  • Set the number of posts that Akismet will check from each user. After this number is exceeded, Akismet checking will be disabled for that user.

  • Auto-Submit spammers that post on your boards back to the Akismet service so that other forums and blogs do not do not receive the same spam.

  • Completely disable the Akismet service.

    Sudo Requirements:

    API Keys:

    API Keys are not required for this system to stop spammers on your forums. But you should obtain them so that your forum can contribute to the real-time block lists.

    A StopForumSpam API key is required if you want to contribute to the StopForumSpam blacklists by adding your spammers to their database. By submitting spammers you help keep other forums and blogs clean.

    An Akismet API key is required if you want to enable any Akismet auto-moderation features in this module. Akismet API key is not required for all Auto-Moderation functions.

    You can obtain a Stop Forum Spam API key which is free from stopforumspam.com.

    You can obtain an Akismet API key from Akismet.com.

    Akismet offers free and paid API keys so choose your version based on your situation.

    Kind Regards

    Lee

Hi,

We do already have several spam counter measures on the forums. The amount of spam actually seen by normal users is very low compared to that which is automatically moderated. We will continue to look at options and how they deployed.

Andrew.