spam is sickening how to stop it?

I am usin adv guestbook 2.4.1 and i am spammed on a minutely base, I want to get rid of that but don't know how, perhaps someone can help me, my server load rises skyhigh.

thanks mates

enable the password feature of comments.

jans wrote:I am using adv guestbook 2.4.1 and i am spammed on a minutely base, I want to get rid of that but don't know how, perhaps someone can help me, my server load rises skyhigh.

thanks mates

My site at the moment doesn't have much (OK . no) traffic. But I was getting spam back to my personal email address through my site anyway.

I set up my box trapper and spam stopped. Period. Of course that doesn't mean the spammers won't or haven't figured out some way to get around it.

I used my cPanel at my web host to set up the box trapper. If you are not familiar with box trapper, it catches email you designate.

Before sending it to you or your site, guestbook, forum, or whatever it sends a confirmation message to the sender of the original email. Once the sender replies to the confirmation, their original message is passed through and they need do nothing more; the box trapper remembers them after the initial confirmation.

In case a spammer happens to get through, the box trapper has blacklist and a white list to disallow/allow I.P.'s of your choosing.

The box trapper can, in some cases, cause problems. Some people simply will not respond to the verification message which means their email will never be passed on to you. Somewhere on your site you should inform them about the box trapper and the need to respond to it.

Mike

After installing LAzarus guestbook I did not get any spam on my guestbook, sadly enough I had to delete all old posts because checking 5500> is not my favorite thing to do on a sunday night

Your suggestion of this box trapper for mail filtering could help me in some other cases though.

On our company site we also have an email adres and all our personell is spammed to hell, perhaps it could be of use there.

could you mail me a link to the programm please and perhaps help me whit some stuuf on how to setup and handlle ?

jans wrote:
could you mail me a link to the programm please and perhaps help me whit some stuuf on how to setup and handlle ?

If you are using a web hosting service, the box trapper is located in your cPanel in the "Mail" section. The cPanel (control panel) is the first thing you see when you log into your web host. The box trapper setup is fairly straightforward.

It seems to me that most (but certainly not all) web hosting companies use cPanel. I'ts normally something that comes with your service, The box trapper is included with cPanel Pro; most web hosts have probably upgraded to it by now.

This is the link to the cPanel website demo page:

http://www.cpanel.net/products/cPanelandWHM/linux/try_cp_whm.htm

Take a look at the cPanel X demo, this is probably the one your hosting company is providing.

Note that this is NOT where you go to service your website, it is simply a demo page.

Try a search for "box +trapper". There is a lot of information out "there" on how to set up your box trapper.

This is getting a bit long. Information on my simple setup in the next post.

Mike

From my own experience most hosts only provide Spamassassin. For mail spam I personall use Spamihilator which sits on your computer and intercepts POP3 email as it is downloaded. I find it has a 99% success rate (on here anyway).

jans wrote:
could you . . . . perhaps help me whit some stuuf on how to setup and handle ?

BTW. There are a few settings in your advGB admin area that will take care of most of the spam.

My personal setup is fairly simple. At the moment I am the only admin of my WebSite, my blog (book), my forum, and my guestbook.

I have several email addresses in those various areas but I set up forwarders in my cPanel to eventually send them all to one address. That is the address I set up my box trapper for. After the box trapper is done filtering that address it sends my email to yet another (and final) address.

My fledgling site is here:

http://www.zfam.us/grumpy/

Check it out. You will notice several places where you can send emails. Photo Admin, Support, Admin, etc., etc., etc..

I have done my best with the limited knowledge I have to hide the real email addresses. How did I do that? Research, research, and more research. Reading docs, reading docs, and reading docs. And trust me, I know my site is far from being safe from spammers, but I'm giving it a good try.

The email address that eventually catches the other mail is set up with a spam filter. I use PopFile. 99.29% accuracy since October of 2004. When the spam is filtered out, my email traffic is low. Unless there is something I need to reply to it takes me about three minutes to check my mail and clear out PopFile.

My suggestion is that you read, read, and read some more until you are sick of it. Truth is you will never be done. As for the individual email accounts at your company, set up a spam filter on the main server and give each user their own spam filter. A good hunk of the spam that comes in is a result of their carelessness on the Web, so why shouldn't they be responsible to take care of it? If they do not learn the error of their ways, your server could possibly (in due time) become overwhelmed with spam and take down your whole system.

BTW, the refusal of the majority of people who use computers to educate their self about their software and their security on the Net is one of the things that make me "Grumpy". Obviously you are not one of them, you are searching for answers.

Better stop . . . I'm about to get started . . . Hmmm, think I'll post something on one of my boards about "lack of education and then whining about the results of lack thereof".

Hope this helped.

Mike

P.S. I should "upgrade" to Lazarus myself but I'm guilty of my own complaint. Too lazy to do it at the moment

Mike Zulkoski wrote:BTW, the refusal of the majority of people who use computers to educate their self about their software and their security on the Net is one of the things that make me "Grumpy". Obviously you are not one of them, you are searching for answers.

Better stop . . . I'm about to get started . . . Hmmm, think I'll post something on one of my boards about "lack of education and then whining about the results of lack thereof".

Try sitting on forums like this sometime then. I personally think they should force everyone to sit an exam before they are allowed to own a computer.

RThanks for your reaction you all, especially the guy who thinks people are to lazy searching for answers and educating themselves thisway just a note

I am a system administrator for a medium company that distributes veggies and in certeain amount I can agree with you, but it's not that people don't want to educate themselves but it's the way the information is presented, try searching for "spam problem" and you'll catch my drift, thousands of links are presented and if you expect people to follow all those you must be out of your mind (sorry)

Especcially spam is a problem that should be taking into consideration and if possible take those who send it to court to try and get them convicted (in my country, th netherlands, they have succeeded and som guy has gottn 4 years of imprisonment to think it over)

Anyway, asking for a solution would be to much, but worse, paying for it evenso, and that's where lies the problem of this all.

The companies that makes these spamstoppers are often the same that generate it.

Carbonize wrote:[
Try sitting on forums like this sometime then. I personally think they should force everyone to sit an exam before they are allowed to own a computer.

I Agree!

Mike

I wont post my opinion on most Sys admins. But most I have come across have learnt it all in a classroom with no practical experience at all. The IT man for my partners company spent an hour trying to get a printer to work. He played with the settings, resintalled the drivers all for nothing. My partner phones me so I asked her if it was plugged in. Guess what, it wasn't

jans wrote:
The companies that makes these spamstoppers are often the same that generate it.

And that is why their is such a huge problem. The proprietary software companies have a huge financial interest in making sure that spam is not stoppable. They only pretend to "help".

And in addition to that, spam would go down the tubes if people would simply stop responding to it. My own sister lost $4,500 (US) in a spam scam. Thought she had won the big jackpot but of course she had to send a "small" amount of money to claim her prize. Hate to say this about my own sister but . . . idiot!

IMHO, Microsoft is the root cause. It's refusal to fix security problems in it's software immediately so that their "Simple to Use" interface is not broken is legendary. And they have the gall to blame Open Source for their problems. Sets a good example for the "normal" computer user.

But we digress.

Mike

Digressing is fun. Makes a change from the same questions over and over and over ad infinitum.