TCH-Rob Posted February 8, 2005 Posted February 8, 2005 I don’t really use Guest books but I thought I would play around with the one in cPanel. I had noticed in my reading that many people were getting a lot of SPAM from bots in their Advanced GuestBook program. I did a little research and found a solution that should reduce the amount of SPAM that you will get. It will not eliminate it but should reduce it. I found a site that uses image verification as a means to prevent auto spamming. You can find it at http://www.carbonize.co.uk/Board/viewforum.php?f=10 I have run this and it is working. For those that are interested and have not heavily modified their AG, I would be happy to assist in working with you to set this up should you want to use it and have trouble installing it. Quote
curtis Posted February 8, 2005 Posted February 8, 2005 I was having spam problems with AG and installed the image verification about 2 weeks ago. Not one spam post since. It does work. Installation is fairly straight forward if you have any experience at modding guestbooks or forums. Quote
bellringr Posted February 8, 2005 Posted February 8, 2005 I may take you up on that help later when I'm a bit more coherent. Been up since 4:30am due to family member having surgery. I don't get a ton of spam, but I'd like to eliminate as much as possible. Thanks! Quote
boxturt Posted February 9, 2005 Posted February 9, 2005 Thanks Rob. I am going to try the easier one first http://www.carbonize.co.uk/Board/viewtopic.php?t=54 but would someone look please and tell me if the middle part of the instructions are wrong and he really means gb_name all the way? Quote
TCH-Rob Posted February 9, 2005 Author Posted February 9, 2005 You need to change gb_name to gb_name### where the ### is a 3 character combination of your choice. Quote
boxturt Posted February 9, 2005 Posted February 9, 2005 Yea, thanks. Just checking because it says change db-book in the middle part Quote
TCH-Rob Posted February 9, 2005 Author Posted February 9, 2005 Yes, there is no gb_book. I have notified the author. By the way, for those that want this but arent comfortable modifying their code for the image verification, I have the changed pages available and I can email them to you. Then all you have to do is overwrite those on your server. Quote
boxturt Posted February 9, 2005 Posted February 9, 2005 I would appreciate that very much Rob, thanks. Quote
peachweb Posted February 10, 2005 Posted February 10, 2005 I'll echo Rob on this tip. I renamed "gb_name", and my spam problems are gone. Quote
boxturt Posted February 10, 2005 Posted February 10, 2005 Thanks Rob, that made things tremendously easy. We'll see what happens, I should know soon. Thanks again. Quote
carbonize Posted March 19, 2005 Posted March 19, 2005 OK I have actually updated my simple anti spam method. I switched from my image verification to the simple method seven days ago and have so far stopped 52 attempted spam postings (I have had it saving spam entries into private messages) You can find instructions for my simple anti spam method for both Advanced Guestbook 2.2. and 2.3.1 at http://carbonize.co.uk/Board/viewtopic.php?t=69. I came up with the simple version as I wanted a method that was invisible to real users and image verification had some problems as well as requiring GD to be supplied. Quote
carbonize Posted March 19, 2005 Posted March 19, 2005 Just added this as I forgot to turn on email notification. Quote
carbonize Posted March 19, 2005 Posted March 19, 2005 The way things are going with my current host you may be seeing more of me. Quote
curtis Posted March 19, 2005 Posted March 19, 2005 Carbonize, Welcome to the forum. Wanted to thank you for the help with several questions I've had about AG at the proxy2 forum. Quote
gun Posted March 19, 2005 Posted March 19, 2005 I have run this and it is working. For those that are interested and have not heavily modified their AG, I would be happy to assist in working with you to set this up should you want to use it and have trouble installing it. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> hi rob, i just implemented your modification into our guestbook, so i cannot say if it is working or not. what i can say though is, that i do very much appreciate the way you explained the mods, so that even a coding illiterate (which i am)could manage to do it. as i do not have the slightest idea what the changes in the code actually do, i would like to ask you to give me some basic explanation of how spambots spam guestbooks and why your mod prevents them to do so. i am just asking out of curiosity, so if you don't want to explain that in public, that's fine with me. in any case, thank you very much for your effort. best gun Quote
carbonize Posted March 19, 2005 Posted March 19, 2005 The question of whether or not my anti spam measures were working is why I made my guestbook store all entries that got classes as spam in the private message table. Last Saturday I switched from the image verification system to the simple anti spam system and told it to start saving the spam entries. Seven days have no past and I have logged over 60 attempted spam entries. They all appear to have come from the same worm/virus as the ICQ number is always the same. I say worm because the posts alway come from different IP's. Anyway forms such as the guestbook work by sending the forms information to the script. The information is sent as variable=data. If you look at the url at the top you can see an example of this in action. The spam works by just sending the information straight to the script. Image verification stops it because the required variable will be missing or wrong. My simple anti spam method works by changing the name of one of the variables thus stopping the script from accepting the data. Quote
carbonize Posted March 19, 2005 Posted March 19, 2005 Thankee Glad nobody as commented on the fact I am not a totalchoice client lol. Quote
TCH-Don Posted March 19, 2005 Posted March 19, 2005 Well not yet, but soon, you can't resist with good prices and reliable service we will assimilate all Quote
carbonize Posted March 20, 2005 Posted March 20, 2005 BTW I should point out that the Freddy who wrote the image verification script for me is Helpbytes in this forum. Quote
carbonize Posted March 27, 2005 Posted March 27, 2005 Yay I'm moving to TC as soon as the DNS for my domain has been changed and spread. With my site I bring goodies. goodies beign The db Guestbook which is Advanced Guestbook 2.3.1 overhauled and updated. Added MSN/Yahoo fields, simple anti spam, store posters IP or hostname, smilies in comments, smileys on comments form, disable private messaging, alt tags in smileys, all known exploits patched, logging out of admin takes you back to guestbook, etc etc. To come: - Option to have posts require admin moderation before appearing in guestbook - Change $session as apparently it is reserved by Apache2 by default. - Anything else that comes to mind. Quote
Joaquin Posted March 27, 2005 Posted March 27, 2005 Sounds like Carbonize has swallowed a few PHP books...Welcome to the forums and Rob......please email me the mod'd pages for version 2.3.1, your're the man in advance. Quote
carbonize Posted March 28, 2005 Posted March 28, 2005 Sounds like Carbonize has swallowed a few PHP books...Welcome to the forums and Rob......please email me the mod'd pages for version 2.3.1, your're the man in advance. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> I'm a helper on the Advanced Guestbook forum and got fed up of people asking for modifications and fixes. All the modifications I have written for the guestbook are available from my forum or http://www.carbonize.co.uk/AG. Quote
jhollin1138 Posted March 30, 2005 Posted March 30, 2005 I'm a helper on the Advanced Guestbook forum and got fed up of people asking for modifications and fixes. All the modifications I have written for the guestbook are available from my forum or http://www.carbonize.co.uk/AG. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> Lots of PHP errors on that page. Quote
carbonize Posted March 30, 2005 Posted March 30, 2005 Whoops missed that directory out when editing my scripts after moving to TC. Thanks for pointing it out. Most of the modifications are also in my forum. Quote
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