phpBB Administration question

Vitaminzach · Post by **Vitaminzach** » Fri Nov 16, 2007 22:13

Here's a couple questions for the mods here, or anyone familiar with running phpbb.

I use phpBB for my forums. Don't know if I just need some education on how the settings work, or if it's even possible.

I'm having a problem with lots of spambot (or something similar) users creating accounts. Fortunately they aren't able to post anything.
Q1: Is there some way to prevent these users from signing up?

Similarly, I suspect a lot of these are from small handful of domain/ips. But I can't find the user's ip anywhere in the system, let alone anywhere that I could block ip ranges.
Q2: Am I missing something, is there a way to block users by IP?

Over the last ~2 months, I've had more than 1200 new "spambot" user accounts created.
In the general board settings, I have "Enable account activation" set to "Admin". I suppose that means an account can't be used until the admin (me) approves.
Because of this, I'm supposed to get an email whenever a new account is created so I can approve the user.
I haven't really kept count, but I think I've had less than 10 new account emails during that time. That's 1200+ new accounts, with < 10 emails.
Q3: How are these accounts being created without an activation email being sent to me?

Please help!!

Post by **KeenRush** » Sat Nov 17, 2007 23:22

I'm not expert on this, haven't set this board up, either. This board currently uses custom, I guess, script in the registration that the spam bots can't pass, that already keeps them out. I think there is some way to block certain IPs, but don't know. No idea about the third... Well, this wasn't very helpful.

Perhaps asking at the phpBB forums (I guess there are ones) might help.

Post by **Flaose** » Sun Nov 18, 2007 17:21

In our "Administration Panel" under "User Admin" the selection "Ban Control" lets us ban ip addresses or even ranges. As far as I know, this is the default phpBB setting, but as I didn't set it up, I can't be positive.

To check the IP address, there is a box on each post next to Quote and Edit that has a little "ip" written on it.

As for your other questions, I can't really be of help, sorry.

DaVince · Post by **DaVince** » Mon Nov 19, 2007 13:14

The best thing to do is switch to SMF, or perhaps that new version of phpbb, but...

In any case, SMF has much tighter spambot security (for some reason) and tools.

entropicdecay · Post by **entropicdecay** » Mon Nov 19, 2007 16:20

If we switched to SMF, would we keep the posts, postcounts, users' accounts, etc.?

Vitaminzach · Post by **Vitaminzach** » Mon Nov 19, 2007 17:25

Thanks! Very helpful!
I missed a very important detail:
These "users" haven't posted anything. So I can't see their ip by looking at a post.

Also - This was about my own forum, where I don't have time to waste on pruning the user list daily. I wasn't suggesting changing the pckf - this forum seems to be well-managed and doesn't have 1300+ fake users. (It's over 1300 now.) But I just might look into this SMF myself...

DaVince · Post by **DaVince** » Mon Nov 19, 2007 18:23

elecdude33 wrote:If we switched to SMF, would we keep the posts, postcounts, users' accounts, etc.?

Another forum I know of moved successfully, everything being kept intact (except maybe some special characters since the default character set is different on SMF). I'm not sure what tool they used for that, maybe I could ask?

Oh yeah, you can always see the users' IPs in peoples' profiles in SMF, though spambots tend to have randomized IPs.

entropicdecay · Post by **entropicdecay** » Mon Nov 19, 2007 18:48

DaVince wrote:
elecdude33 wrote:If we switched to SMF, would we keep the posts, postcounts, users' accounts, etc.?
Another forum I know of moved successfully, everything being kept intact (except maybe some special characters since the default character set is different on SMF). I'm not sure what tool they used for that, maybe I could ask?

Oh yeah, you can always see the users' IPs in peoples' profiles in SMF, though spambots tend to have randomized IPs.

Hmm. Well, good to know it's possible, at any rate. But I don't think many people would be all that comfortable with changing forums again this soon.

Post by **Flaose** » Tue Nov 20, 2007 0:09

phpBB is just fine. There is no reason to change. I highly doubt that there is anything that SMF can do that phpBB can't.

DaVince · Post by **DaVince** » Tue Nov 20, 2007 10:34

I've found several things that SMF can do that phpbb can't, actually, over the time I've posted here. I just haven't mentioned them to keep the nagging to a minimum.