[RFC] Anti-spam features

[Pony99CA]

Maybe we should borrow a feature from vBulletin and create a pre-defined Banned group. Banning a user would just put them in that group instead of denying them access completely.

As for the Advanced Block MOD, my understanding is that it just allows defining and weighting multiple Black Lists. So why can't we add something similar to phpBB instead of relying on the hard-coded Black List used today?

Steve

[wintstar]

Why should Spamer register yet. It would be better to close the door before registry.

[EXreaction]

Maybe we should borrow a feature from vBulletin and create a pre-defined Banned group. Banning a user would just put them in that group instead of denying them access completely.

As for the Advanced Block MOD, my understanding is that it just allows defining and weighting multiple Black Lists. So why can't we add something similar to phpBB instead of relying on the hard-coded Black List used today?

Steve

A pre-defined banned group may be useful, but that's a large shift in policy from the current way things are done. I'm not sure how most board owners handle banned users.

Some sort of plugin system for content analysis might be more useful; then it would be relatively easy to create a plugin for checking against a user generated blacklist and for other things such as using Akismet.

Why should Spamer register yet. It would be better to close the door before registry.

Yes, that would be nice, but someone needs to figure out a way to differentiate spammers from legitimate users when they try to register. Current methods to attempt to block people from registering if they are spammers either do not catch many and/or are too broad and can block too many legitimate users.

[Pony99CA]

Maybe we should borrow a feature from vBulletin and create a pre-defined Banned group. Banning a user would just put them in that group instead of denying them access completely.

As for the Advanced Block MOD, my understanding is that it just allows defining and weighting multiple Black Lists. So why can't we add something similar to phpBB instead of relying on the hard-coded Black List used today?

A pre-defined banned group may be useful, but that's a large shift in policy from the current way things are done. I'm not sure how most board owners handle banned users.

I presume that the Banned group would basically be No Access by default. You would still keep the ability to save a ban message which would be displayed to users in the Banned group.

Some sort of plugin system for content analysis might be more useful; then it would be relatively easy to create a plugin for checking against a user generated blacklist and for other things such as using Akismet.

Content analysis is a great idea (and discussed -- at length -- in the "Official" integration with Akismet topic), but it's not the same as blacklisting. Blacklisting takes place in session.php before the user is even completely logged in; content analysis is only done for users who are already logged in (unless you allow guest posting) and posting or sending a PM.

Steve

[EXreaction]

Two different kinds of blacklisting. You're talking about IP/email/username blacklisting, I'm talking about a word blacklist. In both situations it's a list of terms that cannot appear in a certain field (IP, email, username, post content, etc).

[Pony99CA]

Two different kinds of blacklisting. You're talking about IP/email/username blacklisting, I'm talking about a word blacklist.

Let's call that "word censoring" then, a feature that phpBB already supports and either expand that with an option to prevent posting or make it into a simple content analysis plug-in. Yes, it's a type of black list, but we do have a more specific name for it already.

In fact, I suggested having just such a simple word blocking plug-in in the content analysis topic that I linked to previously.

Steve

[Master_Cylinder]

I found that Advanced Block Mod stopped almost all of my spam registrations so I'd love to see something like that added to the core as well as better administration tools like those found in Ban Hammer, Disallow links before x posts and Anti-Spam ACP.

User administration and blocking/deleting spam is something that every admin has to deal with so a better set of tools without having to install several mods would be appreciated. If they are optional then some admins could turn them on/off by checking a box but these should be in the core functionality.

I also like the idea of an *optional* Banned user group and an optional hidden "trash-can" forum for moderators/admins to discuss threads/users/etc and be able to recover the deleted topic if needed.

[Master_Cylinder]

It seems to be the time to start thinking of adding further anti-spam helpers as the CAPTCHA alone is not enough with the newer methods spammers use.

Preventing users from posting links until they have X number of posts too...

[naderman]

There's an RFC for one of these proposed features: marking posts/users as spam at https://area51.phpbb.com/phpBB/viewtopi ... 08&t=44639 -

[jsebean]

It seems to be the time to start thinking of adding further anti-spam helpers as the CAPTCHA alone is not enough with the newer methods spammers use.

Preventing users from posting links until they have X number of posts too...

That could be a simple permission that I proposed a while back that you could apply to the newly registered users group. A post links permission, and a "Can post links without approval" permission. Not sure where it is now, but could be quite useful for combating spam posts.

Additionally, wasn't there mention sometime of an official akismet plugin, similar to how MyBB does that. That could be useful for even 3.1