#1 2009-09-02 9:06 am

Talk Angling

Member

Registered: 2009-09-02

Posts: 1

Existing forum with many spammers already registered

Hi,

Hope you guys can help me. I run the forum on www.talkangling.co.uk which is a vBulletin based forum.

I have come to the point where spammers are affecting my users experience and putting load on my server so deceided to impliment the stopspam vb mod but as I understand it only stops spammers from this point forwards - is there any tool to sweep through my existing registrations and remove those accounts which are known spammers?

Simon

ManyQ&As

Member

From: Japan

Registered: 2009-09-01

Posts: 15

Website

Re: Existing forum with many spammers already registered

I think I'd be surprised if there is software available to mass delete active accounts unless it's the standard purge of older accounts or inactive accounts. Any other seems that it could be dangerous if something went wrong, and we all know that software sometimes doesn't do what is expected of it.

On the other hand, software that can ID known IP addresses and/or email accounts with a spamming history within existing registrations -- don't know about that. Can't say as I've heard of such software. Only way I have known of doing that is one-by-one manually. There are a few tricks to make the job a bit faster, but I've never seen nor used any auto programs, but I can't really say that I've checked.

Have you checked on the vBulletin Community site? I seem to remember a few years ago being a member there. Didn't stick around long, though. Difference of opinion, if I remember correctly. Think the honcho there got seriously uptight with me.

Be sure to let us know if you find such software, please. I'd sure like to know about that.

Well, you've got me thinking now. maybe a program that could go into a raw data log could work. But those raw data logs are huge. Really huge. Still, that seems one possibility, and I wouldn't be surprised if somebody has written a program for that. But that would only show you which accounts you needed to delete, not actually delete them. Just a thought.

Keep us posted.

skippybosco

Member

Registered: 2008-05-21

Posts: 160

Re: Existing forum with many spammers already registered

A couple of things come to mind.

1) I agree that it would be very beneficial to regularly re-scan existing users to see if their details are flagged in the SFS db. (Pedigree, I think this was on the wish list from a while back)

2) You may want to consider implementing the vb Akismet plugin:

http://www.vbulletin.org/forum/showthread.php?t=163742

It will check posts against the Akismet (same that wordpress uses) for all users or just users that belong to certain vb groups.

Skydiving

Member

Registered: 2009-09-30

Posts: 1

Re: Existing forum with many spammers already registered

The best thing to do is to stop the spammers from registeing in the first place. If you stop it there you will have less problems.

In Vbulletin, make sure in your ACP users registration that you have new registrations to be approved my administrator. Before you approve them, check the IP and email address here on stopforumspam. If you find that they have a previous record and suspicious user name then dont's approve them.

If you approve them, you can definetely have thier IP and email if you have the 3.8.4 VB and check them here. You can then run a check and decide to exterminate them and ban them from your board.

The key is to stop them from registering in the first place.
You can also download the "Is Bot" from vbulletin.org to stop the automated spam.

Hope this helps and Good luck.

pedigree

uıɐbɐ ʎɐqǝ ɯoɹɟ pɹɐoqʎǝʞ ɐ buıʎnq ɹǝʌǝu ɯ,ı

From: New Zealand

Registered: 2008-04-16

Posts: 7,104

Re: Existing forum with many spammers already registered

Of, having searched the forums, you wouldve found my plugin for vbulletin to stop registrations (code in development for mass scanning)

- vbstopforumspam