New spam bots

And 2) Change
/locale/Danish/register php:

$locale['402'] ="something...";

to include Location in the error message that pop ups if the field User Location is not filled in.

:)

Use the register disclaimer mod and none of them can get in at all.

i've had this over the last couple of days too :(

Keeping a site clean can be difficult at times with these spammers. For those who want to keep their sites MOD-less so they can easily upgrade, I have created an infusion that eliminates these spammers automatically so you don't have to keep an eye out for them.

The infusion is called BotSlap and it's quite efficient. You can check its details and download it by accessing the Open Beta Site.

It is now available in the following languages:
- Danish
- English
- Norwegian
- Romanian
- Swedish

Homdax, I hope it's OK with you that I took a screen-shot right off your site. B)

Everyone has spam problems. However, when it's disrupting our websites' activities we have to do something about it, even if we know we can't stop them for good.

BotSlap acts like a cleaner for known viruses except that, in this case, it eliminates spammers from our sites. We're not wasting time but helping people not to waste their hosting space and bandwidth by having a lot of spam, not to mention that these messages are not appropriate for children or... simply... normal people. And we all know websites are accessible to the whole wide world. That's why we need protection.

would a captcha for the comments not stop this?

@B@Z: definitely not

@kneekoo:
I took a short look at your mod and do not think that this panel protects a site against bots.
Look at your method of looking for the bots:



Now, what is, if the bots have no numbers in their email and in their username anymore?
What you want to do then?

The best and most effective thing you could do to prevent the bots from spamming at your site is, when you make it more difficult for the bots when they register on the site and there you confront the bots with a task, what bots never can do.

So for example use some individual modifications like shearer did it. (He only made a little mistake in his PHP-Code).
Or ask individual questions like in the modification, which I wrote.
Such individual modifications or questions are much more effictive then to look for some typical attitudes of bots, because the author of the bots can change their names and email-adresses ;)

i have made the changes now. thnaks for the help guys ;)

slaughter, your solution is good for now - I can't argue is that. But as mine's not perfect, neither is yours, captcha or some other security measures. They can all be bypassed at some point. But let's take a look at the facts.

1. There are a lot of unprotected sites and they can get spammed.
2. The sites admins can get protection by using your work or mine.
3. The difference between our solutions are:
3.1. Yours is a MOD, mine is an infusion.
3.2. Yours prevents robot registration, mine only cleans them up.
4. The last thing to consider is the fact that sites already infested with spam need cleaning. This is where BotSlap comes in.

Yes, the spammers can change their methods but we already know they have been able to bypass the current captcha and they will continue avoiding our security measures. Security is only a process, not a permanent solution and ours do different things.

I'm not competing with you but actually help people with their existing problems. If you checked the screen-shot above you have certainly noted that BotSlap cleaned a lot of spam on that site. Now imagine deleting over 100 members manually. I think you'd rather use my method for that, either coded by me or by yourself. You're a better coder than I am, but I'm doing something else here and I'll keep updating it for those who are not protected, because it's useful to them.

Even if BotSlap allows spammers to 'live' for max. 10 minutes, it has one little advantage over your solution. Admins who install it won't have to reapply it everytime they update. It's just something you can install and leave it there. It's just a matter of updating the infusion every once in a while, when the spammers change their ways.

so, are we saying that the most effective (at the moment) way of dealing with these spam bots would be to modify the register process with a question - maybe something like "1+1=" and then the person has to answer "2"
and then also using the slapbot infusion from Kneekoo to clean any mess they have already made?

if so, then how can i go about modifying my register.php to include that question - can somebody point me in the right direction please as i'm no good with php :(

@kneekoo: I respect your good work and I am sure nobody, who helps out here in this board wants a competion or something like that. All coders around PHPFusion work for free :)

But, an individual question on the register.php is the best and most effective method to protect a site against bots. Bots have no brain and so they can not answer the question.


If every user takes another question, they never can be bypassed.

Your infusion is really great, but you always have to update the method of "catching" the bots. And it will become more and more difficult for you, if they change it always and make their bots better.

At this point:
@B@Z: No! "1+1" is not secure! You need an individual question or something other, what is individual, for your site. For example: What color has the sky?
A bot can count 1 plus 1, but he does not know the color of the sky ;)
And yes kneekoos infusion is very good to delete the bots, which registered on your site in the past. But for the future you should make something individual on the register page. You do not have to use my mod, you can also do handle it like shearer. But is more easy for you to use my mod, there you don't need anything to know about php.
But I know, that my mod is a MOD and an infusion would be easier for the people. But in this case you must edit the register.php ...
Here I wrote what to do.