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#1 2022-05-21 9:40 pm

PaganChat
Member
Registered: 2022-05-09
Posts: 4

"User Panel > Submission Stats" page not updating?

We added the SFS extension to our phpBB forum about two weeks ago. The up-side is we stopped getting bogus account requests, but the down-side is when we check the Submission Stats page, nothing is listed. I'm certain that the plugin is working, people are able to create an account, but the number of bogus accounts have dropped to zero.

Have we missed a step in the install/set-up of SFS, or do we have a setting wrong that is interfering with the reporting of blocked attempts? How do we debug/fix it?

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#2 2022-05-21 11:45 pm

Alex Kemp
Moderator
From: Nottingham, England
Registered: 2009-12-02
Posts: 2,420
Website

Re: "User Panel > Submission Stats" page not updating?

PaganChat wrote:

the number of bogus accounts have dropped to zero

Please confirm that you *used* to see a graph of submissions + historical details. If you have never seen any such, then check for the value of your API Key (keep the value secret, but please report that you actually already have such an API Key).

If you do NOT have an API Key then you have identified the problem (it is not required to have an API key in order to block spammers, but it *is* required if you wish to report such spammers back to SFS). The final step is to check that you have switched reporting ON in the plugin, since the default is often OFF.

If you 1) Have an API Key + 2) Have switched reporting ON, then you need to check with the supplier of the plugin for the necessary steps to debug it. Stats for Submitted Spammers should appear reasonably quickly.

Please bear in mind that reporting spammers is NOT an automatic process (unless you have both installed & authenticated your domain as a HoneyPot, in which case you also need specialised software, since any plugin that allows auto-reporting will be blocked unless it is part of a restricted, authenticated Honeypot). Ordinary reporting of spammers back to SFS is a *Manual* process. The following all needs to be true to report a spammer:

  • You need an SFS API Key

  • Your forum needs to have been spammed by a Spammer
    (yes, actually spammed, not a failed *attempt* to spam it)

  • You need to have obtained a verified Email Address for that spammer

  • You need a Username for the spammer

  • You need the IP Address for the spammer

  • Obtain Evidence of the spam

  • Then, either via this website or API (eg via the plugin) report the spam

This is the point where most folks go "Oh", and walk away & forget it.

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#3 2022-05-22 4:37 am

PaganChat
Member
Registered: 2022-05-09
Posts: 4

Re: "User Panel > Submission Stats" page not updating?

"Please confirm that you *used* to see a graph of submissions + historical details."
No. The Stats page hasn't shown any hits from day one.

"If you 1) Have an API Key"
We do have, and it is entered on the Settings panel on our ACP. Also, both options are checked on the "stopforumspam.com/keys" page.

"2) Have switched reporting ON"
The only reporting option is for users to report spam, and it is noted it would be advised to keep that option off.
("Allow reporting of PMs: If you have an API key and allow this then any user can report a PM to stop forum spam. Your users maybe “indiscriminate” so it might be best if you leave this set to no.")

"Please bear in mind that reporting spammers is NOT an automatic process (unless you have..."
Oh! I thought when a username, email or IP address being used to create an account was found in this database, it would block that registration attempt as well as update the chart on the "Submission Stats" page. I was checking that chart simply out of curiosity. If that is not automatic, I was mistaken about the data represented there.

If that chart only displays the manually submitted data, then that answers my question...

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#4 2022-05-22 5:19 am

PaganChat
Member
Registered: 2022-05-09
Posts: 4

Re: "User Panel > Submission Stats" page not updating?

"This is the point where most folks go "Oh", and walk away & forget it."
This extension is awesome. It works as advertised, even if I was confused about the process. It's staying activated. We ain't walkin' nowhere.

Thanks Alex.

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#5 2022-05-22 1:04 pm

Alex Kemp
Moderator
From: Nottingham, England
Registered: 2009-12-02
Posts: 2,420
Website

Re: "User Panel > Submission Stats" page not updating?

It's staying activated

Yeah, that's not what I was pointing at!

It was the reporting aspect. Most folks do not want to be spammed. No argument on any side about that, but the slightly perverse aspect is that *every* spammer in our DB has spammed a forum. It is, after all, a dB of actual spammers, not a dB of *wanna-be* spammers. Therefore, in order to report spammers you need a forum that gets spammed (by definition, that is also what a HoneyPot forum is, but quite reasonably a HoneyPot is a step too far for most to setup, although those are also by weight of numbers mostly how we keep our dB up-to-date).

Many folks want to report spammers, most do not want to be spammed. It is when they realise that “being spammed” is the prime requirement to be able to report a spammer that they walk away from the idea of reporting (but still want a clean forum, of course).

No problem there.

PS
Welcome to SFS!

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#6 2022-05-23 4:17 am

pedigree
uıɐbɐ ʎɐqǝ ɯoɹɟ pɹɐoqʎǝʞ ɐ buıʎnq ɹǝʌǝu ɯ,ı
From: New Zealand
Registered: 2008-04-16
Posts: 7,054

Re: "User Panel > Submission Stats" page not updating?

I'll have to have a look. thanks for letting me know something might not be running.

is your key tied to this account? if so then I'm not seeing any submissions from your key.

this stat is updated in the database on insert so its strange if its not showing anything when submissions are being made.

you can DM me your server IP so I can look in the logs, but I don't keep much (for privacy reasons) so DM me quick after trying to submit one, with the error if possible

does your plugin support submitting spammers?

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#7 2022-05-23 6:36 pm

kpatz
Member
Registered: 2008-10-09
Posts: 1,437

Re: "User Panel > Submission Stats" page not updating?

As others have alluded to, blocking spammers is not the same as reporting spammers.

Most of us come here initially to block spammers.  Their site is getting spammed and they want to stop (or at least gain some control over) it.  That is what most plugins help to automate.  To do this, the plugin queries the API and depending on the results, either allows the registration or blocks it, or (in some plugins) may flag the registration for manual review.  None of this gets "written" to the SFS database, so there are no statistics available, unless your plugin generates its own on your site.

Once you get this up and running, some choose to contribute to the database by submitting spammers.  This is where the requirements are more stringent.  In addition to needing an API key (easy to get), you need to have your site actually spammed, a validated email address used by the spammer, IP and username, and additionally, evidence (the text of the spam message or at least the links) is highly recommended.

Due to the "your forum must have been actually spammed in order to submit spammer" rule, blocking and submitting are somewhat mutually exclusive.  If your spammer failed to spam due to being blocked, you can't submit it.  If your spammer registered but didn't actually leave any evidence of spamming (a spam post, or spam links in their signature or profile), you can't submit it.  What you can submit are the ones that the blocking failed to catch, and they actually left some spam behind.  The plugin's admin control panel may allow you to submit from there, after reviewing the info to confirm it's actually spam.

The next step beyond manually submitting is setting up a honeypot, but this is a lot more involved and requires approval from the SFS staff.  This is the only permitted way (that I'm aware of) to automate submissions.


Spam happens when greed meets stupidity.

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#8 2022-05-25 5:13 pm

PaganChat
Member
Registered: 2022-05-09
Posts: 4

Re: "User Panel > Submission Stats" page not updating?

Just following up.

It was my misunderstanding, I thought the graph on the"Submission Stats" page would display denied account creation attempts. Alex's explanation cleared that up. The extension has completely stopped the spam accounts from even showing up in the "Notifications" que for approval. Everything appears to be working exactly the way it is supposed to.

Thanks for all your help. SFS solved the problem we were having.

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#9 2022-05-25 8:52 pm

Alex Kemp
Moderator
From: Nottingham, England
Registered: 2009-12-02
Posts: 2,420
Website

Re: "User Panel > Submission Stats" page not updating?

Thanks for following up, PaganChat - very helpful.

In the early days of the dB a great many users would (effectively) use it as a Firewall. They would check the IP of *every* visitor to their site in order to deny them entry if they existed as a spammer within our dB. Now, there isn't a problem using the API to do that with visitors wishing to signup — that is what it is designed for — or even, perhaps, making a daily download of one of the SFS Toxic IP Addresses and then using that locally as a reference for blocks. But no, growing hundreds of sites were using the API in momentary fashion for *every* visitor to their site, and at our end that became an effective DDOS attack on our server (even if the ‘malicious’ component was missing, that is academic when your server cannot function).

If we attempted to provide a stats record for each user I would expect that to immediately become a variant of the previous paragraph (I'm not intimately familiar with that SFS coding nor loads, but look to see just how long it takes the bulk stats page to appear, and then think of that multiplied by many thousands of sites). There would be nothing to stop any plugin recording local stats but again, I do not know of a single plugin that offers that, and strongly suspect that processing loads are the reason why. Most Plugins operate at a very high level within the Server OS, and such stats would need to be coded at a very low level to keep the load sufficiently low as not to threaten server viability.

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