Is the spam a recent problem? As in the last couple of months? Here's why I ask...
I have been monitoring and taking care of spam user accounts, and the forum members have been good about catching those that "slip through" so I can delete bad posts immediately. I'm fine continuing in that role, even though I'm not actively participating in FL in any other way right now. Here's what I've been doing: * The thousand or so spam accounts I deleted yesterday were very old, from before we had a lot of blockers in place, and only a handful of them had ever posted anything. * Since January, I get an email every time a new user joins the forum. I have responded each time by examining each user's account profile, creating an active block on the user's user name and IP if a Google search indicates this as suspicious behavior. I haven't had an email about a new user since early April, and I haven't had anyone report that I accidentally flagged any valid accounts. * Now that I have my access back, I can go in and update software and fix vulnerabilities as needed. The only thing I need to know how to do right now is implement SSL for the forum sign-in to meet the HTTPS requests from a couple of you. Any help on that would be appreciated. Forum spam is a reality with any solution you go with. Heck, there are people being paid to behave as normal users these days to get around the blockability of bots. So, I agree with the aforementioned quote from smerp that it's something you just have to pick someone to deal with. I'm happy to keep dealing with it for you guys for now. Oh, and the reason the forum went down: the Settings.php file that the forum requires was corrupted somehow. It's chmod 0600 now (not sure why I hadn't done this before), and there's always a backup version of the file there, too. -Stef -- Stephanie E. Watson 6720 Sandwell Ln #105 :: Raleigh, NC 27607 s...@foresightlinux.org _______________________________________________ Foresight-devel mailing list Foresight-devel@lists.rpath.org http://lists.rpath.org/mailman/listinfo/foresight-devel
