Anyone Tired Of The Spam??

[gspinney]

Anyone here tired of the Spam??

Fake entries into your search engine// don't these people have a life?

Wouldn't you just like to say, my target market is the United States and everyone else in the world can piss off

Well sorta like that. Only allowing people living in the USA to access you site, everyone else is SOL and that includes the Spammers from overseas.

It's not the best option, but it works.

block a country, block by ip address, deny access by country

All you do is add the list of country IP's you wish to block in your .htaccess file.

Sample below block Asia/Pacific Region

<Limit GET HEAD POST>
order allow,deny
deny from 61.14.0.0/18
deny from 61.14.128.0/19
deny from 61.14.160.0/19
deny from 124.108.64.0/19
deny from 124.108.96.0/20
deny from 125.252.64.0/18
deny from 125.252.192.0/18
deny from 202.0.156.0/22
deny from 202.0.188.0/22
deny from 202.0.192.0/18
deny from 202.2.128.0/24
deny from 202.2.129.0/24
deny from 202.2.130.0/24
deny from 202.2.131.0/24
deny from 202.2.132.0/22
deny from 202.2.136.0/21
deny from 202.2.144.0/20
deny from 202.2.160.0/19
deny from 202.2.192.0/18
deny from 202.6.88.0/23
deny from 202.6.252.0/22
deny from 202.12.19.0/24
deny from 202.12.20.0/23
deny from 202.12.27.0/24
deny from 202.12.28.0/23
deny from 202.12.30.0/24
deny from 202.12.31.0/24
deny from 202.20.98.0/24
deny from 202.20.111.0/24
deny from 202.41.140.0/22
deny from 202.41.144.0/23
deny from 202.41.146.0/24
deny from 202.43.192.0/19
deny from 202.61.8.0/22
deny from 202.135.0.0/22
deny from 202.135.4.0/22
deny from 202.135.8.0/21
deny from 202.135.16.0/20
deny from 202.135.32.0/19
deny from 202.135.64.0/19
deny from 202.135.96.0/19
deny from 202.135.128.0/22
deny from 202.135.132.0/23
deny from 202.135.134.0/24
deny from 202.135.135.0/24
deny from 202.135.136.0/21
deny from 202.135.144.0/20
deny from 202.135.160.0/19
deny from 202.135.192.0/18
deny from 202.161.128.0/24
deny from 202.161.129.0/24
deny from 202.161.130.0/23
deny from 202.161.132.0/22
deny from 202.161.136.0/21
deny from 202.161.144.0/20
deny from 202.167.0.0/20
deny from 202.167.16.0/20
deny from 202.167.32.0/19
deny from 202.167.64.0/18
deny from 202.167.128.0/20
deny from 202.167.144.0/20
deny from 202.167.160.0/19
deny from 202.167.192.0/20
deny from 202.174.8.0/21
deny from 202.177.192.0/20
deny from 202.177.208.0/20
deny from 203.14.166.0/24
deny from 203.79.32.0/20
deny from 203.84.192.0/19
deny from 203.119.16.0/22
deny from 203.119.20.0/24
deny from 203.119.21.0/24
deny from 203.119.22.0/23
deny from 203.142.0.0/19
deny from 203.145.224.0/19
deny from 203.147.112.0/20
deny from 203.163.0.0/18
deny from 203.163.64.0/18
deny from 203.169.56.0/21
deny from 203.171.128.0/19
deny from 210.4.192.0/20
deny from 210.5.192.0/20
deny from 210.5.208.0/20
deny from 210.5.224.0/19
deny from 210.7.96.0/19
deny from 210.7.128.0/17
deny from 218.100.1.0/24
allow from all
</LIMIT>

Personally I have limited access to my site to only the United States and Canada.

It has cut the Spam 95%

[dody]

my country ip start with 202.

[inspireme]

personally i think its a bad solution. people use proxies, work abroad etc...

[FSGDAG]

personally i think its a bad solution. people use proxies, work abroad etc...

Agreed... With services like vtunnel.com and others just like it, blocking the countries IP range is only a bump in the road to them.

[inspireme]

why dont wry to come up with a good way to cut down on the spam... the captcha is good, but VERY easy to break, wont even cause a problem to most of the bots. I wouldnt want the captcha to be stronger though as its hard for real users to deal with them if you make it really hard. an easy way to improve the position is to add a robots.txt file and exclude the add.php file - it wont get indexed, and its almsot impossible for a bot to find the page automatically. it also doesnt affect a real visitor. Could take a few months for the page to dissapear from seach engine listings before you saw any difference.

next, rename add.php (takes a bit more work to do this)

lastly, remove "powered by indexU" from the footer, spammers and hackers use these defaul footers to find similar sites once they have crakced ways to spam the directory software.

Oh, and be glad you use indexU not phpld - i had one of those directories gettign 200 spam submissions a day, i jsut converted it and now i have had 3 in 4 days!

[Bruceper]

Why not change the font on your captcha? Or the background image? That confuses bots to no end as they are used to a specific font/background combo.

Excluding add.php won't help, spammers can search for indexu sites and simply add the add.php to the base url. All of that can be automated simply.

One thing that WILL cut down on automated spam is a custom field that is required. Since most spam bots simply fill out standard forms a non standard required field confuses most of them.

Renaming add.php is a good way to go, as long as it's not a standard renaming across all indexu sites.

Another idea to really confuse them is to rename the fields. Since a spam bot looks for the "name" tag then change URL to ADDRESS. That can work with the other fields too. Yes it might be a pain, but it does work.

Removing powered by IndexU and changing the standards indexu meta tags is another excellent way to go.

Most of these "tricks" I leaned with vbulletin. Spam bots simply search for the standard headers, phrases and tags associated with a script. Change them and you hide yourself from automated spam bots searching for a specific script.

Of course none of that will matter to a spammer who does things manually. But those guys aren't really the ones you want to worry about, it's the spambots submitting dozens/hundreds of fake submissions that you should concern yourself over.

As a side note, if you search for "powered by indexU" on google you'll see the fourth link titled Google Hacking Database. You can see how the script kiddies find indexu sites from that link. You can assume that spammers know this info as well as a whole bunch more.

[linksor.com]

captcha: or install IPTABLES

[CEC]

I haven't had much of a spam problem. I did, however, on a phpbb forum site. I am NOT a programmer (I just follow instructions), but I used a really simple modification (called a VIP code) which absolutely stopped spam registrations. I wonder if something like it could be adapted for INDEXU. The code itself can obviously be included among other text, it could be an image, etc.

You can see it on the registration page at the following forum:
Citizen Canine Dog Forum :: Index

Regisration link is at the upper right (menu).

[Bruceper]

That code might have stopped spam signups, but my guess is that it might affect regular signups as well. PHPBB is horrible for spam, they really need to do something about it.

IPTABLES would be a good idea too.

[CEC]

Obviously the forum isn't that large -- but I've never received a question about it. It's an extremely easy step ... not sure why you'd think it would present any significant barrier to registration. Your note about phpbb is unrelated.

Anyway, it was just a thought.

[gspinney]

personally i think its a bad solution. people use proxies, work abroad etc...

Yeah, people use Proxies, but you have legal ground to go after the company who provides the service in Canada and the USA.

After try to sue some company in Asia, Russia or Germany??

If you web site is a World site, then no this is not a good idea.

If you cater to a select are, region, city or town you can block certain countries that know hackers are from... ie. Russia, Poland, Asia and limit problems.

BTW, I am looking for some computer geeks that would like to help me start up a web community.. WebHosting Forums - Web Hosting Discussion :: Index

Anyone here interested, sign up and shoot me a PM.

[richrf]

Hi everyone,

I'm in the process of evaluating different directory scripts and the issue of spam protection is critical to my site - especially spam protection on comments. The two solutions offered on Wordpress that work very well for me (I get hundreds of spam each day) are Akismet and Bad Behavior. Both have APIs that I can use to block spam comments and entries. Has anyone tried to integrate Akismet and/or Bad Behavior into IndexU? If not, is it possible to do something like this?

Thanks for the info.

Rich

[FSGDAG]

Hi everyone,

I'm in the process of evaluating different directory scripts and the issue of spam protection is critical to my site - especially spam protection on comments. The two solutions offered on Wordpress that work very well for me (I get hundreds of spam each day) are Akismet and Bad Behavior. Both have APIs that I can use to block spam comments and entries. Has anyone tried to integrate Akismet and/or Bad Behavior into IndexU? If not, is it possible to do something like this?

Thanks for the info.

Rich

Bruceper and / or Inspireme would be the best two people to try this, outside of the NiceCoder staff. Of course, this depends on if they have the time to try something like this... But anything that helps to counter spam is something I'm definitely interested in!!

[richrf]

Bruceper and / or Inspireme would be the best two people to try this, outside of the NiceCoder staff. Of course, this depends on if they have the time to try something like this... But anything that helps to counter spam is something I'm definitely interested in!!

Thanks for the reply. What is the best way to get in touch with the parties that you mentioned? Or do they regularly read these posts?

Thanks for the help. For me, spam control is essential. My experiences with Wordpress have been positive because of their very strong spam controls that they have put in place to protect their millions of users.

Cya around,
Rich

[FSGDAG]

Thanks for the reply. What is the best way to get in touch with the parties that you mentioned? Or do they regularly read these posts?

They are both on here alot! I'm sure if they have the time or can give it a whirl, they will reply soon

I know that WordPress has been successfully integrated into IndexU... I'm wondering if that will make a difference at all