Signup abuse detection and blocking 1.16.8

From (simple) multiple accounts detection to isp/connection fingerprinting with score-based moderating/rejecting logic. These are very effective low-hanging fruit at reducing spam.

See the Known Issues section for known limitations. This is not a turn-key solution, and each site may require customization!

Supports migration configuration from the following XF1 add-ons;

• TPU Spam Detect
• Alter ego Detector

For multiple account detection, supports reporting to reports/threads. And will send reports to the same report/thread.

• It is recommended to use the "multi-account to thread" extra instead of reports + send reports to forum. If a licence does not include this extra/add-on, please open a ticket and it will be added free of charge.

For connection fingerprinting more additional information is collected and recorded on the account.

Link content spam checking

Instead of adding the spam phrases http:///https:// which generate lots of false positives; this allows controlling how links are treated by the content spam checker;

• Explicitly allow URLs with a given domain
• Explicitly moderate URLs with a given domain
• Explicitly reject URLs with a given domain
• Default allow/moderate/reject for unclassified URLs

Multiple account handling permissions

• Bypass multiple account checking
• Can enable / disable alerting for user
• Can enable / disable alerting for log
• View reportings

Use Multiple account to thread add-on to send multiple account reports to threads.

Per-user whitelist:
View attachment 3124

Multiple account logs per-user:
View attachment 3125

Known issues

• This is not a turn-key solution for blocking spam, but rather a toolkit.
  • On banning a spammer, it is recommended to check the "User Registration Record" for that user and check the signup IP to see if it is associated with an ISP which provides VPN, hosting, or proxy services but not residential services
    If so, you may wish to consider adding that ISP to be grey listed (ie auto-moderate) or blacklisted (auto-reject).
• There may be GDPR considerations due to the additional information collected and exposed to staff. This information is currently not purged when the account is deleted.
• Geo location information is not an exact science, and VPN providers are adversarial at ensuring ip-geo location may not be accurate