Forum spam

[David]

I wonder if it's a good idea to block/ban IP addresses of spammers, especially for an indefinite length?

I am asking this because a few days ago Shauing PMed me because he was blocked by IP address.

This happened again, so now I un-banned all banned IP addresses.
Let's hope we won't get too much spam...

[David]

This happened again, so now I un-banned all banned IP addresses.

This did not help.

This PM gives a further clue:

Tried to log out and log in again, same thing. Oddly, the spamhaus link says the IP has no issues...gonna try disconnecting and reconnecting my modem here.

There is a Spamhaus link in the block message.
I wonder if maybe the block is not even coming from the built-in IP-blocking of the forum, but from the Stop Forum Spam extension?

[David]

There is a Spamhaus link in the block message.
I wonder if maybe the block is not even coming from the built-in IP-blocking of the forum, but from the Stop Forum Spam extension?

Err, or maybe it's built-in after all, but it's not from the "Ban IPs" section of the Moderator Control Panel:

i find myself at least 3 times a week going through mostly human bots that have tried to get on my forums and have to manually delete as not been denied by phpBB's internal DNS (spamhaus and spamcop).

[David]

If any admin is reading this: Can we turn off Spamhaus filtering?

[Falcury]

I turned off the Spamhaus filtering, hopefully this fixes the issue!

[David]

I turned off the Spamhaus filtering, hopefully this fixes the issue!

Thank you!
It works, Shauing could now post in the forum: viewtopic.php?p=35503#p35503

[David]

Spam is coming from a user who made legitimate posts back in 2017: search.php?author_id=2597&sr=posts
(Note: Only admins and mods will see the trashed spam posts.)

This happened again, now to _Zaphod_: search.php?author_id=341&sr=posts

Even his signature was changed to a spam link. Can an admin delete that?

[Falcury]

This happened again, now to _Zaphod_: search.php?author_id=341&sr=posts

Even his signature was changed to a spam link. Can an admin delete that?

Done. I sent _Zaphod_ an e-mail and reset their account password to a new randomly generated one.

[David]

Done. I sent _Zaphod_ an e-mail and reset their account password to a new randomly generated one.

Good, I see he posted again: viewtopic.php?f=67&t=4930&p=35517#p35517

Could you do the same with the other hacked accounts?
search.php?author_id=2597&sr=posts -- hellgenocid
search.php?author_id=2832&sr=posts -- Gilberto9
search.php?author_id=2857&sr=posts -- AlphaYellow