Topic: Private Message Spam and Abuse

Private Message Spam and Abuse

Ted Mann
Participant

@tedmann

15 years, 1 month ago

Is there any way to enable captcha or something similar on BP private messaging?

That’s where I’m seeing more and more abuse lately. Somehow sploggers register with my site, then PM all the users with kiddie porn links. It’s really bad.

I don’t quite have a handle on how they’re doing this. There must be some sort of evil script that goes through the member directory and messages member after member. Have other people seen this, and, if so, any suggestions on how to combat it?

Viewing 10 replies - 1 through 10 (of 10 total)

Paul Wong-Gibbs
Keymaster

@djpaul

15 years, 1 month ago

I’m not aware of any captcha plugins for this, but it’s a good idea. I haven’t time to look into the code atm.

DjZoNe
Participant

@djzone

14 years, 8 months ago

I don’t know if you’ve found a treatment, for this, but I’d suggest a plugin named HashCash from Donncha:

http://wpmu.org/wp-hashcash-for-wpmu/

5887735
Inactive

14 years, 6 months ago

Message spam is getting out of hand.

Kevin Ryman
Participant

@kevinryman

14 years, 6 months ago

Yeah I just got two spam private messages in the last two days. Here is the latest one:

Please reply back with my email (anabel . awaza 01 @ yahoo . co . uk)
Dearest,
How are you over there?
I know that you would be excited for the fact that you do not know who is writing.
Actually my name is Mis. Anabel Awaza,Please my dear i will like us to hold a good long time relationship with real love.and I have something very important that I need to share with you. I am very serious; I shall tell you more about myself and send you my picture in my next mail.please reply back with my email address (anabel . awaza 01 @ yahoo . co . uk))
Hoping to hear from you soonest.
Yours Anabel.

View Spammer’s BuddyPress profile:
https://buddypress.org/community/members/anabel4you/

5887735
Inactive

14 years, 6 months ago

I’m getting these on my own site. These are spam bots and they found a way into BP. This should be a number one priority for BP. I’ve seen this stuff with phpbb and other CMS. It very easy for these people to bring down your site.

xspringe
Participant

@xspringe

14 years, 6 months ago

Got my second spam message as well. It seems to be affecting multiple BP installs so I think it should be a high priority to do something about it.

r-a-y
Keymaster

@r-a-y

14 years, 6 months ago

Try this until a more, full-featured privacy component is available.

Remove send private message button for non-friends:
http://blog.etiviti.com/2010/03/buddypress-hack-remove-send-private-message-for-non-friends/

5887735
Inactive

14 years, 6 months ago

Thanks for the link. I’m going to try that if my current changes don’t work. I changed the register slug and added more required fields to the signup page. I’ll let you know if it works.

PS
Looking at that code it seems it still let admins send PMs. If that’s true could it also be changed to allow other “ranks” such as authors, subscribers, etc.?

xspringe
Participant

@xspringe

14 years, 6 months ago

Even more spam now, coming from this user: https://buddypress.org/community/members/joymab/

Ben Hansen
Participant

@ubernaut

12 years, 3 months ago

does anyone know if this plugin works well with current versions of bp or if there’s an alternative? i swear i read something about 1.5 having throttle settings but i couldn’t find anything looking around.