Discussion about spammer

[SnDPhoenix]

just for the sake of changing it.

I was thinking for security fixes and bug fixes, not just a new look.

If you know of any specific vulnerabilities with the forum software, I would appreciate specific details rather than vague warnings, so I can fix the problems.

Sorry to sound vague, I was not referring to any specific vulnerabilities that I know of but instead I just mean that there is a whole "library" of exploits for phpBB in those popular exploit databases.
However, thankfully this forum is v2.0.23, which only has a couple exploits I am aware of.
Though, you have to watch out for any phpBB mods installed as well!

No ... A forum account called footprints has been spamming about some show, but that's not what I meant. I am referring to the insane anti-social person who has been the subject of this topic from the start.

Oh ok, I guess I didn't see his posts yet or forgot about him. The only spammer I've seen recently is the Abdullah show guy and sometimes you'll see someone bump an old topic and their signature will contain links to some generic spam site.

I still wonder why he keeps posting that.

Isn't that spamming?

[D1G1T@L]

There are some very good techniques to prevent forum spam as per this article

Regarding prevention of new member links, there is a phpbb plugin I've found here

[opera]

Tzuk please see your pm's

[tzuk]

I appreciate the suggestions from everyone, but this is a case of an obessive human who is deliberately connecting 3-4 times a day, each time finding a new proxy bot computer to connect through (because I applied an IP ban on the bot he was using earlier), only to post this targetted garbage here. I don't think any automatic solutions is going to work.

[SnDPhoenix]

He might also be connecting through TOR, thus he gets a new IP address like every couple minutes, plus he can right click the tray icon and select "New Identity" to force a new IP address from a different TOR node any time he wants.

[Ruhe]

I'm banned too, because I'm using HMA! Pro VPN

[Peter2150]

I've also been banned from a couple of my Hotspot VPM IP's.

Probably the best suggestion is a couple of mods strategically located around the world. Then when he posts nail him.

Pete

[Ruhe]

Ban by IP isn't really a good idea.
I may not visit this board just by using VPN?

[tzuk]

He might also be connecting through TOR, thus he gets a new IP address like every couple minutes, plus he can right click the tray icon and select "New Identity" to force a new IP address from a different TOR node any time he wants.

At first he was using servers. By this I mean, when I looked up the various IPs he used, the results I got were all in blocks of IPs allocated to hosting companies. That was probably a year ago. But in the past few months that's no longer the case and the IPs now mostly look like typical ISP dialup IPs.

Anyway, the IP bans don't really help at all, other measures have proved to be much more helpful. So with that said, I just cleared the ban list. I am sorry the bans were banning honest folks.

[Buster]

The forum is full of spam again.

@tzuk - My suggestion:

Give privileges to a few trusted users (Guest10 would be a good candidate) to remove users with less than x messages (spammers) and all their messages.

[opera]

And make sure those trusted users with the privileges are in different timezones e.g Europe, USA

[SnDPhoenix]

Yeah, the spammer was ridiculous this time. Worst spam attack I've seen on this board yet.

In case you didn't see it, some asshole "tzuk_sandboxie" was spamming every section of the forum with his trash, the last I checked he had posted 132 individual pieces of spam within a few hours.
Some of the titles of his post were personal insults towards tzuk or other members, which makes me think he's human and not automated. It looked like this:

[Ruhe]

And this happend after tzuk cleared the ban list.