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RadioActiveLamb 
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Joined: 29 December 2005
Location: United States
Status: Offline
Points: 171
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 Topic: Spammers on the rise
Posted: 27 January 2011 at 4:17pm |
I've always had a steady flow of spammers from various countries. As they post, I block their subnets. Recently though, I'm finding that spammers are PMing my membership. Because they're PM's, I don't get to see the IP addresses. Is there something in the user record that records their last-used IP address?
Does anyone have any suggestions for combating the spam-by-pm problem?
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iSec
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Joined: 13 February 2005
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Points: 1140
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Posted: 27 January 2011 at 4:54pm |
- Enable IP Logging of new registrations - let's you record the IP address of newly registered users
- You can also enable admin-approval of new registrations, through which you get an email along with the user's IP info. This allows you to see if the user is from a suspicious world region (China, India, etc.) where spammers usually come from.
I personally have both enabled and because of it no spammer could escape anymore!
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"When it gets dark enough, you can see the stars"
-Charles A. Beard
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123Simples
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Joined: 08 July 2007
Location: United Kingdom
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Points: 1192
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Posted: 27 January 2011 at 7:57pm |
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That's good advice iSec
I think that spamming is a problem, and so often it is very easy (and I notice this too) how usernames crop up with repeating regularity and normally associated with spammers just trying to sell their junk
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WebWiz-Bruce
Admin Group
Web Wiz Developer
Joined: 03 September 2001
Location: Bournemouth
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Points: 9844
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Posted: 28 January 2011 at 11:05am |
You can also use the Private Message Flood Control to reduce spam. Byt default I beleive it is set to 10 Private Messages in 1 hour, but you can reduce this.
Once the user has sent this number of Private Messages they can not send any more during that hour. Most spammers are paid to spam as many sites as possible so they only spend around 5 minutes on each site and may never come back to yours again.
The following page is also useful on reducing spam:-
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alabamatoy
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Joined: 04 February 2006
Location: United States
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Points: 143
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Posted: 04 February 2011 at 1:13pm |
Turn on manual activation. Here's what I did. Works very well....
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JohnLug
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Joined: 16 June 2008
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Posted: 03 March 2011 at 4:12pm |
 iSec wrote:
- Enable IP Logging of new registrations - let's you record the IP address of newly registered users
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I'm missing something. Where do you enable IP Logging of new registrations?
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123Simples
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Joined: 08 July 2007
Location: United Kingdom
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Posted: 03 March 2011 at 4:45pm |
I'm missing something.
Where do you enable IP Logging of new registrations? |
Hi John To enable IP logging open up the file includes/setup_options_inc.asp using a text editor. About line 70 you will see this:
'Logging
'Web Wiz Forums is able to create log files of actions, activity, and errors. However this WILL effect performance so be careful what you enable logging for.
'Logging requires that the folder storing log files has read, write, and modify permissions for the IUSR account in order for Web Wiz Forums to create and write to log files.
'SECURITY ALERT: MAKE SURE THAT YOU MOVE THE LOG FILE LOCATION TO A FOLDER NOT ACCESSIBLE TO THE PUBLIC.
Const blnLoggingEnabled = False 'Enable logging
Dim strLogFileLocation
strLogFileLocation = Server.MapPath("log_files") 'Default log file folder, change this to a folder outside your website root if you don't want logs files to be public
Const blnModeratorLogging = True 'Log the actions of moderators
Const blnErrorLogging = True 'Log error messages
Const blnNewRegistrationLogging = True 'Log new registrations
Const blnCreatePostLogging = False 'Log the creating of new topics and posts (Don't enable this on busy forums)
Const blnEditPostLogging = False 'Log the editing of topics and posts (Don't enable this on busy forums)
Const blnDeletePostLogging = False 'Log the deletion of topics and posts |
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123Simples
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Joined: 08 July 2007
Location: United Kingdom
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Posted: 03 March 2011 at 5:01pm |
To secure the log files (you will already see a folder in the forum directory called log_files) you should ideally create a new folder above your root directory (not accessible via a browser) and then edit the setup options file accordingly. For example, say if you were hosting on Web Wiz servers, then you would login to your DNP, go to your file manager for that website, and create a new folder like below in this image:  Now depending on where your forum directory is, you would then need to edit the setup file to point correctly to the new folder. EXAMPLES - Forum is the main page of your site Code would then be something like:
'Logging
'Web Wiz Forums is able to create log files of actions, activity, and errors. However this WILL effect performance so be careful what you enable logging for.
'Logging requires that the folder storing log files has read, write, and modify permissions for the IUSR account in order for Web Wiz Forums to create and write to log files.
'SECURITY ALERT: MAKE SURE THAT YOU MOVE THE LOG FILE LOCATION TO A FOLDER NOT ACCESSIBLE TO THE PUBLIC.
Const blnLoggingEnabled = True 'Enable logging
Dim strLogFileLocation
strLogFileLocation = Server.MapPath("../forum-log-files") 'Default log file folder, change this to a folder outside your website root if you don't want logs files to be public
Const blnModeratorLogging = True 'Log the actions of moderators
Const blnErrorLogging = True 'Log error messages
Const blnNewRegistrationLogging = True 'Log new registrations
Const blnCreatePostLogging = False 'Log the creating of new topics and posts (Don't enable this on busy forums)
Const blnEditPostLogging = False 'Log the editing of topics and posts (Don't enable this on busy forums)
Const blnDeletePostLogging = True 'Log the deletion of topics and posts |
If say your site was mywebsite.co.uk/forum/ (so the forum is not the main part but within its own directory) then the setup page code would be:
'Logging
'Web Wiz Forums is able to create log files of actions, activity, and errors. However this WILL effect performance so be careful what you enable logging for.
'Logging requires that the folder storing log files has read, write, and modify permissions for the IUSR account in order for Web Wiz Forums to create and write to log files.
'SECURITY ALERT: MAKE SURE THAT YOU MOVE THE LOG FILE LOCATION TO A FOLDER NOT ACCESSIBLE TO THE PUBLIC.
Const blnLoggingEnabled = True 'Enable logging
Dim strLogFileLocation
strLogFileLocation = Server.MapPath("../../forum-log-files") 'Default log file folder, change this to a folder outside your website root if you don't want logs files to be public
Const blnModeratorLogging = True 'Log the actions of moderators
Const blnErrorLogging = True 'Log error messages
Const blnNewRegistrationLogging = True 'Log new registrations
Const blnCreatePostLogging = False 'Log the creating of new topics and posts (Don't enable this on busy forums)
Const blnEditPostLogging = False 'Log the editing of topics and posts (Don't enable this on busy forums)
Const blnDeletePostLogging = True 'Log the deletion of topics and posts |
Obviously you also need to make sure that the folder name matches yours, and you need to give write permissions to the folder, otherwise it cannot log the entries. Hope that helps
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