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The Era Of Big Spam Is Over.

Ozzy47

Administrator
Spam is a giant pain in the arse. It can be hell to clean up after. Things such as CAPTCHA, reCAPTCHA, and Question and Answer Verification are defeated by programs such as XRumer

There are a few useful mods from vBulletin.org that have proven very effective against spammers even getting to the site.

This will stop most of the spam bots that auto-register: ( Brought to you by, kh99 )
Spambot Stopper - Prevent Spambots from Registering vB 4.x
Spambot Stopper - Prevent Spambots from Registering vB 3.x

This gets alot of human spammers because they still use early IE and other known bad user agents: ( Brought to you by, Simon Lloyd )
Ban Spiders by User Agent vB 4.x
Ban Spiders by User Agent vB 3.x

This stops registration by any device on blacklisted host names: ( Brought to you by, nhawk )
Hostname or Useragent Registration Ban works on vB 3.x and vB 4.x series

This one stops registrations that use spammy email usernames containing dots and other punctuation.
[OzzModz] Block Registrations With Spam Like Email Addresses vB 4.x and vB 3.x

This mod gives you a chance to stop them BEFORE they even attempt to register: ( Brought to you by, BirdOPrey5 )
Rename register.php by BOP5 works on vB 3.x and vB 4.x series

I have a couple of lists to use with the mods. One is for use with the Ban Spiders by User Agent mod, and the other is for the Hostname or Useragent Registration Ban mod. These lists were not compiled by me, they were provided to me by, Max Taxable

Make sure the Ban Spiders by User Agent list is one useragent on each line, and the Hostname or Useragent Registration Ban list is a comma separated list. Open the documents with wordpad, not notepad. NOTE: You must be a member in order to download the lists. :yo:


NONE of the above use captchas, puzzles, questions or other such nonsense that merely annoys legitimate users, and have been rendered obsolete anyway for the most part, by auto-spam programs such as XRumer.

The era of Big Spam is over.
 
People reading this should also note, gimmicks such as Glow Host Spam-O-Matic aren't listed. Not because they are bad Mods, but because what Ozzy lists in the OP pretty much leaves mods such as SoM nothing to do. Therefore they are superfluous. You don't need those.
 
People reading this should also note, gimmicks such as Glow Host Spam-O-Matic aren't listed. Not because they are bad Mods, but because what Ozzy lists in the OP pretty much leaves mods such as SoM nothing to do. Therefore they are superfluous. You don't need those.

lol tell me again why i dont need glowhost this mod stopped spam in it tracks before this mod i had hundreds or thousands daily flood my forum in the last year alone maybe 8 got past the doors this has saved me so many headaches plus i can sit back cause i have lazy mods lol

glow host is a winner imo
 
lol tell me again why i dont need glowhost this mod stopped spam in it tracks before this mod i had hundreds or thousands daily flood my forum in the last year alone maybe 8 got past the doors this has saved me so many headaches plus i can sit back cause i have lazy mods lol

glow host is a winner imo
If you have the provisions installed which Ozzy lists in the OP, they get the spam before SoM ever sees it. Therefore it is superfluous.

However other than banning of legitimate humans (which it often does do) it doesn't do any harm to have it. There can never be too many arrows in the quiver.

However I avoid ALL anti-spam measures which can ban or in any way restrict legitimate users, or even annoy them. This is why I also use NONE of the native human verification - no questions, captchas, puzzles, and so on. I don't even require email verification, since it is useless against spam.
 
I do require email verification, not as a means to protect against spam, but a way to get ahold of the users with updates and such. As you can see on here, there is only 4 things to fill out to join, name, password, email and date of birth. So it is rather painless for users to join, don't have to preform circus acts to get in. :playball:
 
If a person enters a valid email address on his/her account, they still get all the email whether it is verified or not. And, a email address is required for registration - may or may not be a valid one in any case.

Email verification like so much other stuff, is a matter of personal preferences. I choose not to saddle users with the step of having to hunt for the verification email in their junk or spam folders, etc.
 
Of course on a site such as this is it absolutely vital for people to use a valid email address, so I would be requiring verification too, for this site.
 
If you have the provisions installed which Ozzy lists in the OP, they get the spam before SoM ever sees it. Therefore it is superfluous.

However other than banning of legitimate humans (which it often does do) it doesn't do any harm to have it. There can never be too many arrows in the quiver.

However I avoid ALL anti-spam measures which can ban or in any way restrict legitimate users, or even annoy them. This is why I also use NONE of the native human verification - no questions, captchas, puzzles, and so on. I don't even require email verification, since it is useless against spam.

i disagree glowhost is a life saver you have your opinions i have mine and i wouldnt install any other mod other then glowhost for spam
 
i disagree glowhost is a life saver you have your opinions i have mine and i wouldnt install any other mod other then glowhost for spam
It is a fact that legitimate users get blocked and banned by SoM. Not a opinion. It is a fact that SoM won't see any spam, if a board has the provisions Ozzy lists in the OP. Not a opinion. Everyone is entitled to his/her own opinions, but none of us are entitled to his/her own facts.
 
It is also a fact that some spam gets through the SoM. This is why it is prudent to have more layers of protection. We're not talking about limiting spam, we're talking about ending it.
 
I've been using Glow host for years and some of the features are really helpful such as reporting spammers directly from a deleted post, etc. it does much more than check the ban lists ips.

Ideally I would like to see all of this built in to Vbulletin.

Great thread Ozzy! Nice to see you and some other guys here!
 
I've been using Glow host for years and some of the features are really helpful such as reporting spammers directly from a deleted post, etc. it does much more than check the ban lists ips.

Ideally I would like to see all of this built in to Vbulletin.

Great thread Ozzy! Nice to see you and some other guys here!
Cleverly, none of the Mods recommended interfere or conflict with the SoM. So it's perfectly fine for people to continue to use it if they want.

I'm the cat who secured this site for Ozzy and it's never had even one spammer make it past registration, despite well over 2000 attempts already in this board's short life so far.
 
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Spam-O-M WAS working , it was defeated a few months ago leading to well over 2k blogs being generated by bots ETC.
:mad2:
 
That's got nothing to do with Spam-O-Matic. It can't nor does it claim to, stop exploit kiddies.

Neither can any of the anti-spam mods we recommend. That's not their function.
 
Glad that SOM is working for you, but note, none of the other things you listed will help with spammers, but will help with hackers. :)
 
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