Vietnamese spammers

[grahamdevizes]

Forum URL: aviationforall.proboards.com/

Hi all

My forum seems to suffer recurring spam from Vietnamese spammers. The forum is open, we have anything up to 600 visitors who drop by most days plus the signed up members so we want to keep it open. The spamming is more of an annoyance than a real issue but we would like to keep it out if at all possible. It's always in the Vietnamese language, no one can read it anyway, so the exact point of the spamming on an English language based forum is somewhat beyond us.

Is there any way in which we can keep this out from our forum please?

Many thanks

[Craig]

Hi

There are measures in place which catches most of the spam, for example the bot check, but there are some that slip through the cracks unfortunately, especially if they are posted by real people and not bots. There are limited means to determine the actions of someone until they have created an account or posted.

With that said, it is worth checking back for a reply from one of the staff as they may be able to help further.

[Kami]

Have you considered to / are you aware that you can set the boards to be viewable by guests, but only postable by registered members?

From your opening posts it sounds like you want to keep your forum contents readable / entice new membership through your content, avoid guest spam, and leave it open for members to respond.

If that is the case, you can edit your board settings in admin > structure > categories and boards.

• Multi-select all the boards you want to change (if you're having a spam problem, I recommend all of them) by holding CTRL and left clicking each board you wish to edit.
• Once all boards are selected, click the "edit" button at the top-left of the container, and then click the "Permissions" tab in the ensuing dialog pop-up.
• Scroll to the options that read: "Who can create threads," "Who can reply to threads", and "Who can create polls".
• Change these to say "Members & Staff" and save your changes.

NOTE: I believe there is a known bug that if you multi-select the boards to double check your permission changes saved, it will appear as they haven't; to check your settings saved, instead select only ONE of the boards that was modified and check. If that one saved, the rest did too.

If you don't want to restrict guest posts, a nuclear option would be to wildcard ban the IP range of the offending spammers by adding an asterisk instead of the last few digits of the IP address. The broader your range (eg 12.345.* versus 12.*) the wider the net. However, note that in doing so you might inadvertently ban legitimate users with similar IPs/from the same region.

[grahamdevizes]

Many thanks for the replies guys. KAMI, your suggestion sounds great as at the end of it, we have only ever had spam posted from Vietnamese posters and I doubt very, very much that anyone from that country would have a bonafide interest in our aviation forum.

Kind regards

[Kami]

Jun 15, 2021 3:06:52 GMT -8 grahamdevizes said:

Many thanks for the replies guys. KAMI, your suggestion sounds great as at the end of it, we have only ever had spam posted from Vietnamese posters and I doubt very, very much that anyone from that country would have a bonafide interest in our aviation forum.

Kind regards

No worries! Just be careful — broader nets can lead to unexpected results. IP addresses aren't 100% accurate all the time (eg: VPN, or just "detection" errors, like my Los Angeles based IP sometimes gets flagged as Boston which is clear opposite the US for me) so broad range wildcard bans can limit access for those you don't intend to restrict.

If you go with the wildcard ban option as opposed to restricting guest posts, my recommendation is to adjust incrementally. Start off by replacing the last set of digits (after the last period) with an asterisk, then let it go for a bit and see if the spam rates improve; increase the number of places you remove by one as needed and just iterate slowly as opposed for going for a full range immediately.

[grahamdevizes]

Thanks again, one final question, how do I go about implementing that on the forum please? Whereabouts would I find those options?

[Scott]

grahamdevizes you would go to Admin > Security > Bans. Scroll to the bottom and add your new entry in the IP Address field.

[Kami]

Also, if you need help finding IP addresses, they'll be contained in the drop-down cog of any of their posts. Alternatively if you've already deleted them all, you can check the security log (also under admin > security) and look for their thread creation entries and grab one of the IPs (since you're wildcard banning, it can be any IP as long as the first few numbers are similar; if you have any dissimilar IPs you'd need to ban those too). You can also filter security log content at the top right of the page container by action to make your search a little easier.

[grahamdevizes]

Thanks to you both, however, when I go to the security log-bans and attempt to enter a wildcard IP address, it tells me that it's an invalid IP and won't let me load it

A thought, the spammer (s) always use the same name "thuydet" plus either three or four numbers. Could I put thuydet **** into the username field and keep them out that way?

[Scott]

grahamdevizes , when you enter the wildcard ban you want to use an asterisk, not a percent symbol.

Example:
123.456.78.*
or
123.456.*

Jun 16, 2021 2:48:06 GMT -8 grahamdevizes said:

A thought, the spammer (s) always use the same name "thuydet" plus either three or four numbers. Could I put thuydet **** into the username field and keep them out that way?

Sorry no. Wildcard username bans do not work.

[Kami]

Jun 16, 2021 4:11:48 GMT -8 Scott said:

grahamdevizes , when you enter the wildcard ban you want to use an asterisk, not a percent symbol.

Example:
123.456.78.*
or
123.456.*

Jun 16, 2021 2:48:06 GMT -8 grahamdevizes said:

A thought, the spammer (s) always use the same name "thuydet" plus either three or four numbers. Could I put thuydet **** into the username field and keep them out that way?

Sorry no. Wildcard username bans do not work.

You could sort of get around it by putting "thuydet" as a reserved name (admin > members > reserved names) and that should prevent anyone from registering / creating a guest post with that name in whole or in part.

[grahamdevizes]

Thanks again, I have now added "thuydet" to the list of reserved names.

[grahamdevizes]

An update, another Vietnamese spammer has been placing spam on our forum for the past three days on various occasions. When I go into the admin section to ban his IP, I find that somehow, he is using MY I P Address when he posts, Obviously I can't ban myself so a) how is he able to do this and b) how can I get rid of him for good please?

[Scott]

grahamdevizes -

Are they posting as a guest or did they register an account?

I assume you deleted their post / account? If not, can you provide a link to their post / account. If you did delete, the next time they post please come tag me before deleting so I can take a look. Thanks.

[grahamdevizes]

Hi Scott

They registered an account but I have removed his post I'm afarid

I will do as suggested as and when he posts again

Many thanks