PhpBB 3.06 and spammers

Spud · 2010-01-14 4:26 pm

I don't know how many people have already adopted this but I have decided to post regardless as I am sure there will be many Admins who have not yet realised this valuable feature which will help to combat newly registered spam accounts.

If you have not already done it, go to your ACP panel,
1. select the general tab
2. then look under board configuration
3. and click on User Registration Settings.
4. Now set the New Member Post Limit. I find 5 is a good number but you can make this higher.
5. Now Set Newly Registered Users group to default to ON
6. Click Submit Changes

Next we have to severly limit what the newly registered account can do. We will do this by:
1. Select Users and Groups tab in the ACP.
2. Click on Groups, Group Permissions
3. On Lookup User Group use the scroll option to highlight Newly Registered Users
4. Click Submit
A new window now opens and you carry on by:
5. Under User permissions, Newly registered users, Role you will see on the right the option to select Advanced Permissions. Click this.
6. Now decide which permission you wish to deny these users then click Apply Permissions

Next stage is:
1. Go to ACP Panel.
2. Look under Groups and click Manage groups.
3. on the right you will see Pre-defined groups. look at Newly registered users and click Settings on this user group.
4. Tick the box against Display group in legend
5. Click Submit at the bottom of the page

What you have now sucessfully done is to place ALL newly registered users in a group where they can not post anything to your forum without it having to be moderated and approved first. If you set your permissions right, they will not be able to PM on mass, add signatures to their profiles or pretty much anything which can be deemed harmful.

As this group is also in the Who is online legend, it is easy to keep track of new accounts registered from now on, no matter how long you wish to leave them there.

To aid in your Admin, I would suggest that in your 'Terms of use' you add something to the effect that ALL newly registered accounts which show no activity or posting within a set period of time (I allowed 1 month), will be deleted from the board. This will save you a lot of time checking on silent spam accounts plus make it so easy to watch these new users too.

Last of all, to secure your site even further and kill most spammer accounts before they can even register, you should check out ZB Block. I use these two methods to totally secure my site. You will not need to do much more to have total peace of mind.

Last edited by Spud (2010-01-14 4:43 pm)

ufopsi · 2010-02-05 5:03 pm

Thanks!
About ZB Block: one must add a string on top of (s)the file he wishes to protect. In case of phpBB 3, it's most likely the registration page. So which files are to edit?

zaphod · 2010-02-05 5:12 pm

No, actually, it's a different file.

Place the hook code at the top of common.php and you are done.

Remember, do not add any spaces or newlines to it. Literally wedge it into the first line. where the original line showed...

<?php

Place it in like this

<?php (the rest of the zbblock hook line) ?><?php

This way headers will not be sent if everything checks out, and your forum will still have full control to send headers and whatever it needs to, including the 304s that files from the cache signify with to decrease bandwidth.

Now for further questions like these, please check out the forums at http://www.spambotsecurity.com/forum (including subscribing to the update forums for alerts on fresh updates). StopForumSpam is not the support forum for ZB Block, but they let the occasional help message use their bandwidth. Oh, don't forget to update your files in the /zbblock/vault/ with the latest beta signature.

Zap

P.S. ZB Block is far more than just spam protection though. The reason to use it throughout the forum is it's ability to shunt hack attacks away from your forum.

#1 2010-01-14 4:26 pm

PhpBB 3.06 and spammers

#2 2010-02-05 5:03 pm

Re: PhpBB 3.06 and spammers

#3 2010-02-05 5:12 pm

Re: PhpBB 3.06 and spammers

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