YaBB, PHPBB, Spam and Best Practices

[Axis]

Hello Abyss People--

I am seeking intelligent input from all those people who are using BB systems, especially phpbb and yabb.

I am using both on several sites but here is my concern. Let's suppose you have the highest level security set on either bb, i.e., you have visual confirmation and email verification for new registrations.

Along comes a spammer who is a real person and they go through registering and posting a spam. You, as administrator, can delete the spam post but you'll probably want to ban their username and ip as well. However, on phpbb I don't think you will remove them from the memberlist unless you also delete them as a user. So you might as well skip the ban username part and just delete them from membership? On phpbb memberlists are exposed to robots because you do not need to be logged-in to see them. And spammers love any chance they can get to have their url published.

If you delete them as a member, they will be removed from the memberlist but now they have the option of using the same email address and re-registering. :-(

On the latest YaBB, the memberlist is not exposed unless you are registered and logged-in, which is nice. But again, if you are spammed you can delete message and ban member. So is there any point in deleting them as a member after banning. By not removing their membership you freeze at least one email address from posting again.

Or is it smarter to just delete and remove and let them go through the whole process again.

On my phpbb, I just hacked it so there is no memberlist.

I am just wondering what other people think is wise here, especially if you have had alot troubles with spammers and bb's.


Kind Regards,
Axis

[AbyssUnderground]

I see your point and I agree with what you are saying. This forum especially is spammed that way. The only way to prevent it is to disable profiles until you have signed up and verified the e-mail, and also to disable the member list and forum browsing until verfied also.
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Andy (AbyssUnderground) (previously The Inquisitor)
www.abyssunderground.co.uk

[erskie]

Agreed. However, PHPBB has a very popular hack which forces login before anything else is available - I use this myself, and it means you do not have to hide the memberlist.

My own site is for a closed group, which means that even the login page is not available unless the user can get through the Abyss login. The only reason I do this is uneducated paranoia about being visible on the web.

I would be interested in what sort of experience people have had when exposing their sites to the wild and woolley web, and if any one forum is more robust than others?
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'Smile', he said, 'things could get worse...'

So I smiled, and things got worse...

[Axis]

Hi erskie and Andy--

I guess that the problem is that people generally *want* browsing people and search engines to be able to read the material whether they want to log-in and register or not. In many tech and software related sites you want to see if the answer is already there before feeling the need to register, log-in and post a question.

I think phpbb's see-able by anyone memberlists is one of it's drawbacks and YaBB has this covered. YaBB also allows an administrator (or any registered user) to get global email notifications to a whole board at a time and not just threads, although if it was used on a very active bb it would just be not what you need. If your bb is less busy it can be very valuable.

Still, in both of YaBB and PHP BB one question is do I ban the member or remove them. Banning the member will not allow the email address used to be re-used. But they leave the scar on the memberlist. Getting them off the memberlist (by deleting the user) lets them use the address again.

And on and on it goes. It seems worse every year. And in the U.S. on Thanksgiving Day the spam people were very much at work.

Thanks for both your responses. And any more to follow.

Regards,
Axis

[hc2995]

Hello everyone, this can help ;)


http://www.phpbb.com/phpBB/viewtopic.php?t=427852
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Where have i been? School got heck-tick, had to move half way around the state, then back... and then i had to change jobs, so iv been away for a while :P