ALL users and ALL posts are gone

[Abtzero]

Well, do I hate mondays now?

I had to cleanup my board due to heavy spamming.

I had to delete 1420 User accounts.
Therefore I looked into the phpMyAdmin interface and read some of the email-addresses. Many russian addresses appeared repetedately (strange word...?) So I strated prune useres by wildcarding email-adresses.
Like *popmile45.com I filtered out dozends of users at the same time.

I always was asked for confirmation with a username-list. I also deleted all posts of these users.

In the end all users were deleted and all posts.
I never confirmed the deletion of known users, and I think, I did not enter just "*".

I do not know, what happened.
I do not have a backup; the board was relatively young and had about 50 users. But some important posts...

There is no raw backup in the database?

There is no enthusiasm left for my project.
I feel just empty...

[KevC]

Contact your hosts. They should have a backup.

[Abtzero]

Hey KevC, there is a mySQL backup!!!
I did not think about the hoster... let 's see!


THANK YOU!

[warmweer]

I do not have a backup; the board was relatively young and had about 50 users. But some important posts...

Unforgiveable mistake.
Never do major edits without having a backup!

[david63]

I looked into the phpMyAdmin interface

Ad never directly edit the database unless you know exactly what you are doing. Editing just one table will, as you have found out, almost certainly break your board as many of the tables are interlinked.

[Abtzero]

I looked into the phpMyAdmin interface

Editing just one table will, as you have found out, almost certainly break your board as many of the tables are interlinked.

No, I did not find out. I did not edit the table in phpMyAdmin.
I just took a look to see, which different domains for the user-emails exist. So I found 30-40 who's users are definbitely spammers and deleted them with the admin-gui. I do not know, how it happened to have all users deleted except myself

So there should be a filter witgh a domain blacklist. That would filter out some ammount.
Is there any plugin? I would ban the IP directly...

[warmweer]

So there should be a filter witgh a domain blacklist. That would filter out some ammount.

ACP > Users and Groups > User Security > Ban emails

Is there any plugin? I would ban the IP directly...

Banning IPs is a waste of time unless you know for 100% the user has a fixed IP, and even then - long live proxies

[Mick]

And, in the majority of cases, boards that get heavily spammed have inadequate anti-spam settings. Please supply a link to your board so we can see what you have and offer some advice.

[Abtzero]

Thanks for the offer to check my board!
Here it is: https://forum.midikey2key.de
Since the re-opening I have 160 new accounts to delete or validate...

They have many similar email-providers: skljo.maildddeaml.com, aksni.sdfaldd.com,akljs.sdgmaipop.com, ...
Is there a plugin just to refuse a list of mailadresses?

[david63]

Is there a plugin just to refuse a list of mailadresses?

It is part of the core ACP > Users & Groups > Ban emails

You will not prevent spam with that Captcha - it was broken many years ago.

Use a good Q&A with a question that you cannot Google the answer to in conjunction with the NRU group and your spam will disappear overnight.

[warmweer]

Use a good Q&A with a question that you cannot Google the answer to in conjunction with the NRU group and your spam will disappear overnight.

That's arguably one of the most underused feature phpBB has.

[Abtzero]

&A with a question that you cannot Google the answer to in conjunction with the NRU group and your spam will disappear overnight.

Thanks for Your tips, guys!

I put all the known email-domains I know so far in the ban list. This works.
I also changed to Q&A with the question: "Enter five letters of the phrase birthday starting with the first letter of running.".
Is that understandable for You?

@david63: I do not understand the thing with the NRU group. Something with the "new users" group function (as default)?

Greetz
Abtzero

[RMcGirr83]

rthda

[david63]

I do not understand the thing with the NRU group. Something with the "new users" group function (as default)?

Go to ACP > User registration settings > New member post limit: and set the limit to 1 or 2. Then when a new user registers they will go into the NRU group and their fist one or two posts will need to be approved.

[Abtzero]

*****

Hey! Now You made my security question googelable...