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meetdilip

SKevo hey, it's been a while indeed, wb!

Thanks Kevin. Busy with real life responsibilities. How are you?

SKevo

meetdilip Thanks. IIRC there was a plugin which would simply reject posts with certain words. Not sure if it is still around.

There is Purify which censors words and FoF Filter which should remove posts automatically. I would like to know how the spam works - is it an automatic script that crawls Flarum forums and sends spam? If yes, it's pretty sophisticated since it bypasses most filters, including captchas.

meetdilip Also, from the usernames created, I think that the spammers are either from Pakistan or Bangladesh. Is it possible to block these countries' IP ranges locally through the dashboard?

You could use FoF Ban IPs to block them individually, but as I said, I would rather seek a global solution (for reasons that I have mentioned in my previous announcement)

meetdilip Thanks Kevin. Busy with real life responsibilities. How are you?

Pretty much the same, thanks for asking :) I don't have much time for FreeFlarum ATM because of my exams. But hopefully I'll be able to at least address these issues very soon

meetdilip

SKevo FoF Filter which should remove posts automatically.

I think it doesn't. I have had it enabled for a while now. It says

Input text or words to filter, one per line. If the content of a user’s post contains a string you want to filter, it will be flagged for approval. Resistant against 133t.

So I have to manually deal with it in the mod queue.

SKevo I would like to know how the spam works - is it an automatic script that crawls Flarum forums and sends spam? If yes, it's pretty sophisticated since it bypasses most filters, including captchas.

I believe human spammers. They are doing a good job though.

They mainly focus on only 2-3 domain names and sub URLs. So if we can some how stop a topic or post being created if it has a banned word, we pretty much win.

SKevo Pretty much the same, thanks for asking 🙂 I don't have much time for FreeFlarum ATM because of my exams. But hopefully I'll be able to at least address these issues very soon

Focus on your exams. I am sure you are well ahead of your peers 🙂

You are doing a wonderful job already 🏆️

meetdilip

SKevo FoF Ban IPs to block them individually,

I am sure they use dynamic IPs. So their IPs will never be the same.

SKevo

meetdilip I think it doesn't. I have had it enabled for a while now. It says

Input text or words to filter, one per line. If the content of a user’s post contains a string you want to filter, it will be flagged for approval. Resistant against 133t.

So I have to manually deal with it in the mod queue.
[...]
They mainly focus on only 2-3 domain names and sub URLs. So if we can some how stop a topic or post being created if it has a banned word, we pretty much win.

Indeed. TBH, I am not sure whether an extension for that exists, or if this is already a feature in existing extension.

meetdilip Focus on your exams. I am sure you are well ahead of your peers 🙂

You are doing a wonderful job already 🏆️

Thank you :)

Anyways, thank you for all the info. Could you share your forum URL with me (either mail me or DM me at Telegram or somewhere, if you don't want to share publicly)? Also can I create a temporary admin account? I want to investigate it in more detail and block the spammers server-wide, if possible. We can also continue our conversation there

SKevo

luceos

meetdilip SKevo FoF Filter which should remove posts automatically.

I think it doesn't. I have had it enabled for a while now. It says

Input text or words to filter, one per line. If the content of a user’s post contains a string you want to filter, it will be flagged for approval. Resistant against 133t.

So I have to manually deal with it in the mod queue.

meetdilip So if we can some how stop a topic or post being created if it has a banned word, we pretty much win.

I too believe that removing the post right away without holding it for approval would be better, as you can have +100 flagged posts in a couple of minutes, and I can imagine that can be annoying to deal with (saw it on the forum)

meetdilip

Interesting info from a spammer account

meetdilip

This is a spammer who spammed with a new name within 5 minutes of the above spammer

meetdilip

They are on a spamming spree now. The IP changed to 103.166.187.129

2 sessions again. Both Chrome on Windows,3 minutes apart.

Perhaps some method to ban the 103.xx IP range.

ISP from Bangladesh : FastBD Online

https://ipinfo.io/AS142134

The IP range is small : 103.166.186.0/24

meetdilip

They are also using VPN

An old IP : 178.162.222.161

Germany this time.

meetdilip

Sure 🙂

SKevo

Together with @meetdilip's assistance and willingness to provide his forum data for further analysis of the spam, I have now blocked some of the spam IP ranges present on his forum. If your forum experiences large amounts of spam, then please email me at info@freeflarum.com with spam usernames and your forum URL, and I will look into it & block them.

I am aware that these actors have multiple IPs that they can switch at anytime, so please don't expect this to be a 100 % effective counter-measure. It's rather a provisional measure until we find a better and more effective way to fight spam. I am thinking of automatically fetching spam IP lists from public sources and updating our filters accordingly

meetdilip

SKevo Thanks for the hardwork 🙂

luceos

What exactly made this spam? Was it a generic repetitive message without a link?

SKevo

luceos each discussion seems to be unique. Some are in English, most of them in Chinese. But all of them include various links to latestdatabase[.]com blog posts, so blocking that phrase would be sufficient enough IMO

luceos

SKevo spam prevention blocks any 'n' first posts from new users if they contain links, why isn't that used @meetdilip ? Or is it you don't want those posts held for moderation?

meetdilip

luceos @meetdilip ? Or is it you don't want those posts held for moderation?

I already have something that moves all new posts into moderation. Maybe that is why I didn't notice any difference when the spam prevention is turned on.

This spam is mostly links from latestdatabase.com. They have increased the frequency from a few posts per week to a few posts a day.

luceos is it you don't want those posts held for moderation?

would be nice if there is an option to reject banned link posts than sending them to mod queue.

Thanks.

meetdilip

I forgot to mention what the current workflow is to deal with spammers.

Delete the post
Delete the post permanently
Ban user

It is normally 1 spam post per user. So the higher the number of posts are the workflow becomes tougher.

IIRC there was filter plugin which would not allow to post at all if there is a banned word. I am happy that there is a ban IP plugin. But in this case, something like ban IP range is more useful.

Yolo

we have "increased" the problem that messages are not sent correctly. then this "oops" message comes up. The messages will be sent after a long wait, but then @nicknames and quotes will not be linked.

SKevo

Yolo what's your forum URL? Anything at https://freeflarum.com/settings/forum_settings under the logs section?

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