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+21 votes
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SPAM has been an issue for a long while. Posts submissions can be managed manually by means of the moderation tools and privileges provided by the Q2A platform. However, when it comes to preventing SPAM users registrations, the only tool available are captcha modules.

The SPAM Registration Stopper plugin adds another layer, on top of the captcha modules, that attempts to completely prevent a suspicious user registration. This is done by querying different SPAM checking services. For the time being, a few have been implemented but more can easily be added in the future. In fact, each of these services is implemented as something like "sub-plugins" so adding new services should be as simple as a drag & drop of a single file.

In addition to this, there is a third level that blocks duplicated emails. For the time being, only GMail is supported. It avoids duplicated accounts generated by adding dots to email addresses which fools Q2A's email matching.

The main plugin features are:

  • Prevents potential SPAM user registrations (users do not need to be removed as they are not even created)
  • SPAM users are tested against these well-known services: 
  • Each service is implemented as an internal plugin on its own, allowing for easy extension
  • Rejects registrations with duplicated emails
  • Statistics for the last months are tracked for each service

Note it is impossible to stop SPAM registrations. The plugins aims at slowing them down.

You can give it a try downloading it from the GitHub project page.

Q2A version: 1.8.0+
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Is it possible to add an API key for StopForumSpam
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No, because the StopForumSpam API only requires a key for submissions to their service rather than querying their service
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Nice, I'll give it a try for my site.
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Hello, today I received a message from IsTempMail Support:

Thank you for using IsTempMail.

I have made an update to IsTempMail pricing and plans.

Your Free Account will be able to send 200 API requests in 30 days. There will be no IP and request rate limit.


There are no restrictions in the plugin yet, maybe it's a personal restriction and I'm panicking in advance, so I'll just leave this message - just in case.
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No personal restriction. I got it too. It is a nice service but I guess they couldn't keep offering it for free. The only issue is that 200 checks a month is nothing at all. IsTempMail has blocked 30K SPAM users in the last couple of months in only one of the sites I support. It is not really worth to have it as provider of this plugin.

However, considering people might be interested in paying a subscription and the code has already been developed, I'm going to leave it there. I just have to update the code to apply this logic and limits. In fact, by the time this is being written the new version of the plugin has already been published.  You can watch/star the plugin from the GitHub repository to get notified of the new releases.
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This is a very useful plugin. Can this be added on this Q2A site? :)
https://www.question2answer.org/qa/users?start=19980

3 Answers

+2 votes
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Spam prevention has certainly been a big issue in q2a, so I'm glad that you created this plugin. It will help a lot of people out :)
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+2
Thanks. Just as a reference, in one of my sites it has blocked 2,500 fake user registrations in 5 days. This saves server resources and administration time. 0 cost as well :)
+2 votes
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Hi @pupi1985, Happy new year!

It is a very good plugin. Great job!

it will be nice if this plugin becomes part of default q2a plugins.

This q2a also has lot of spam users, better enable here also

thanks!

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Thank you, and happy new year too you too! Nice to see you're still around :)

Regarding being part of the core or not, it is up to Scott to define. I think it is OK to keep it separate, as long as it is listed in the plugin page.

Regarding installing it here, it is up to the <scary-voice>mastermind</scary-voice> ^.^

BTW, I've just released v1.4.0. It has stricter checks.
0 votes
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Appeal for Help:

1. attempted to install the plugin

2. site is no longer working after attempted (failed) plugin upload

3. received warning about ‘database initialization’ then started getting 503 errors

4. removed the plugin files from the qa-plugin folder

5. problems still persist

What can I do ?

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Can you create an Issue in the GitHub repository? Include the following information:
 * What the server error logs say (essential)
 * What PHP version and Q2A version you are using
 * If you have executed the database initialization or not (according to what you said it seems you just received the warning and got 503 error without executing it)
...