Delete (users) or not delete?

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a3035oc_web
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Delete (users) or not delete?

Post by a3035oc_web »

Recently we have had a spate of new users being added to a forum who are all potential spammers (bots) which we then ban after checks on IP address and email address, etc. Any spam posts that get through are manually deleted. The username, IP address and email address(es) are also added to the banlist table.

Some of these user accounts show recent activity, even though they are banned, which we assume maybe the "bots" trying to post on the site later.

So we want to to get rid of them. We'll use a short mySQL query to find the users who are also listed in the ban_list table.

BUT ...


Would YOU delete the user record completely or set the user_inactive_reason flag?

TIA
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Mick
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Re: Delete (users) or not delete?

Post by Mick »

It’s my opinion that relying on IP addresses for pretty much anything location or bot wise is a waste of time. Apart from your question the best way to handle spambots is to have a good Q&A that the answer cannot be Googled and activate the NRU. This method should handle the majority of bot and human spammers.

These may help Knowledge Base - How to clean up a board hit by spam, Knowledge Base - How to identify a potential spam account and Knowledge Base - How to configure Q&A CAPTCHA.
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KevC
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Re: Delete (users) or not delete?

Post by KevC »

It's very risky to delete accounts directly in the database as they're referenced in several places.
The prune users option in the admin panel allows multiple deletions.
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a3035oc_web
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Re: Delete (users) or not delete?

Post by a3035oc_web »

KevC wrote: Mon Oct 24, 2022 9:58 am It's very risky to delete accounts directly in the database as they're referenced in several places.
The prune users option in the admin panel allows multiple deletions.

There's over 200 already .. so manually pruning them is not really an option when there is only one administrator ...
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Re: Delete (users) or not delete?

Post by KevC »

200 is easy.
If they're relatively consecutive accounts you can delete whole pages at once.
If you set the posts per page to 200, when you 'find a user' you can delete most of them in one click.

I would highly recommend you do not delete them by SQL
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Re: Delete (users) or not delete?

Post by warmweer »

Make a new group (e.g. ToBeDeleted)
Add those users to that group
ACP > tab Users and Groups > Prune users > Criteria
> Group:
Limit to users within the selected group and select the group you made (ToBeDeleted)

Then at the bottom: Options >>> select what you want to do and click on Submit

Whether you want to delete them or inactivate them is something you'll have to decide on.
Inactivation could be an option to prevent the email-address being re-used, but a new email address is quickly made so I would just delete them.

In no way should you try to manually (SQL) delete them from the database!

Instead of deleting them, you could make a hidden group with just about all permissions set to NEVER, add all those users and redirect them to a fake error page (The board is currently encountering some problems. We're working on it and expect to be fully back online in a couple of days.)
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Re: Delete (users) or not delete?

Post by a3035oc_web »

Mick wrote: Mon Oct 24, 2022 9:14 am It’s my opinion that relying on IP addresses for pretty much anything location or bot wise is a waste of time. Apart from your question the best way to handle spambots is to have a good Q&A that the answer cannot be Googled and activate the NRU. This method should handle the majority of bot and human spammers.

These may help Knowledge Base - How to clean up a board hit by spam, Knowledge Base - How to identify a potential spam account and Knowledge Base - How to configure Q&A CAPTCHA.
Actually one of the paragraphs on "How to identify a potential spam account" states:
Additionally the registering IP address which is logged in the account profile page can give a big clue as to the authenticity of the account. Sadly certainly country IPs have an overwhelming tendency to be the source of spam. India, Russia, China, Ukraine, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Philippines, Thailand and Vietnam are frequently the registering IP. If your site is not based in those countries, it’s likely to be a spammer.
And this is exactly what we are seeing .. with the majority of email addresses on gmail ...

So we use stopforumspam and cleantalk to check the IPs ... which is having a big impact and reducing them to one or two a day .. once we had over 30 new accounts ...


I'll look at the "groups" idea and see if we can get them added to a DeletedUser group or something similar ...

I'm only a moderator on this particular group and not sure how much of the Admin functionality the forum/website owner wants to give away. So I've got to find something quick and simple to use. I only became a mod as I was disappointed by how much spam kept getting posted and the moderator team was pretty inactive .. so offered to help out.
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Re: Delete (users) or not delete?

Post by KevC »

If you're 'only' a moderator then the group system works well.

The admin can make the group with everything set to never, set you as the group leader (which allows you to add people to it through the UCP) and then if you spot an account you can just drop it in there. That account can then do nothing and periodically the admin can empty the group (except for your account) or set a prune on it for all accounts with less than 1 post (so your account doesn't get pruned).
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Re: Delete (users) or not delete?

Post by sakm »

Don't ban IP address as this can cause issues for other users if rolling IP addresses are used

I like warmweer's solution to deleting them....Its best to use the built in system rather than via the database
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Re: Delete (users) or not delete?

Post by a3035oc_web »

We are currently investigating the idea of a new group and and I've asked the Admin (forum owner) whether he would be prepared to give some of the mods the extra access to allow us to move users to the group prior to pruning. (KevC Oct 24)

In the meantime I was looking at whether we could use the inactive fields on the users table. There are two: a reason code and inactive time. Reason code is releatively easy as it is an integer and looks like 3 would be a good start which appears to be "Account deactivated by Administrator" but the time appears to be an integer as well. What is this and what would be a good number to update it too? (Again I could use an example from my forum database).
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a3035oc_web
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Re: Delete (users) or not delete?

Post by a3035oc_web »

sakm wrote: Mon Oct 24, 2022 6:41 pm Don't ban IP address as this can cause issues for other users if rolling IP addresses are used

I like warmweer's solution to deleting them....Its best to use the built in system rather than via the database
Will only be a problem if they are using IP addresses allocated to Russia, Ukraine, Turkmenistan, Pakistan, etc .. countries that never sold this particular car make or model!
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Re: Delete (users) or not delete?

Post by KevC »

No, it'll slow down registration if you have lots of IPs in the ban table that have to be searched first to see if the new account is on there. Spammers rarely use the same IP twice.
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a3035oc_web
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Re: Delete (users) or not delete?

Post by a3035oc_web »

KevC wrote: Fri Nov 18, 2022 11:45 am No, it'll slow down registration if you have lots of IPs in the ban table that have to be searched first to see if the new account is on there. Spammers rarely use the same IP twice.
The ones trying to spam this particular forum aren't that clever then ... I had three all from same IP earlier this month!! And they weren't even similar usernames! Most were also using gmail accounts which are harder to block enmass. It's not a heavily used site either as the vehicle that it supports is slowly getting rarer (they rust badly!).

The registration is via a web page, not direct on phpbb, as it gives access to website features too so we're trying to block those with changes to that page/form. (Recaptcha isn't working obviously).

So we're having to block them AFTER they've got access and are doing this via the IP range to avoid flooding the forum with junk. I missed one a couple of weeks ago and got 17 spam posts in quick succession!!

rgds
So now we want to find a quick and simple way to prevent them re-accessing the forum at all .. even those we've banned with username, ip and email still seem to appear in the "Last Active" column randomly.
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Re: Delete (users) or not delete?

Post by KevC »

a3035oc_web wrote: Fri Nov 18, 2022 12:23 pm So now we want to find a quick and simple way to prevent them re-accessing the forum at all
You just need a good Q&A that cannot be searched for.
I spend precisely 0% of my time dealing with spammers because they don't get past the registration.
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Re: Delete (users) or not delete?

Post by sakm »

a3035oc_web wrote: Fri Nov 18, 2022 9:39 am
sakm wrote: Mon Oct 24, 2022 6:41 pm Don't ban IP address as this can cause issues for other users if rolling IP addresses are used

I like warmweer's solution to deleting them....Its best to use the built in system rather than via the database
Will only be a problem if they are using IP addresses allocated to Russia, Ukraine, Turkmenistan, Pakistan, etc .. countries that never sold this particular car make or model!
Do you also have a stipulation that your users are never allowed to visit these countries and also that these cars are never to be exported?

There is better ways of doing this rather than blanket bans which would just exclude everyone
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