#290 - Spammer database

Comment: #catalogue_entry_776

Uploaded an image of the config options. As you can see, we now have some serious power, and a new USP for Composr :).

"Btw, thanks sholzy, as you may have noticed your notes were incorporated into the plans."

Welcome. :-)
I might not have been able to help sponsor this monetarily, but I was able to help sponsor in another way -- sharing my knowledge from research.

I may need to unblock the Punjab region spammers (182.178.*.*, 110.36.*.*, 182.177.*.*) to try out this mod. They were the only real problem I had after moving the old SMF forum to Composr.

In the image and the description, there is reference to Stop Web Spam. Is this supposed to be Stop Forum Spam or is this something different?

Good catch :).

I saw that and was thinking Chris added a new feature - a spam filter for the whole internet. ;-)

Somewhat irritatingly, Stop Forum Spam API submission requires all of IP address, username, and password. So therefore is not suitable for automated submission of detected Guest spammers.

http://www.stopforumspam.com/forum/viewtopic.php?id=2256

So Tornevall API support will also be there. We support tornevall RBL already, so that means we both can feed off and into this.

HOWEVER! It requires PHP to have the SoapClient installed, and I'm also not sure how readily they give out API keys. You have to email to ask for access and I'm still awaiting mine.

This is one of the reasons that I like HTTP: BL (and probably others) as they seem anxious to identify potential threats and start reporting on them. As much as I like all the new features, I will continue using CloudFront to catch the most egregious scoundrels, plus it provides for efficient blocking by country. This will produce a nice "funnel" where IPs let through are challenged using a separate system (stopforumspam) which parallels what I currently do manually.

I can sort of see where StopForumSpa is coming from — they want to be a spammer database only. I just question whether that is a good long-term strategy.

Done! Well, my time estimate was off by a factor of 4, but I did a good job ;).

Before I forget to mention, the patch I post will be compatible with the next v8 RC. I found a few small v8 bugs whilst doing this, and those will be fixed in there (if I put them into the patch, it'll create conflicts later).

Actually, ignore that. I'm going to post the patch now, and the above statement is true. However I will roll in the handful of v8 RC5 fixes to the zip I attach later on today.

In theory the attached zip will be fine with v8-final as well as v8 RC6, as we are so close to release now.

And ignore that again - as RC6 is coming out now, this will be require RC6.