We are debating either upgrading our EBlah from Platinum 5 to the current version or going with a different board system. We're using an older version but I can't find any information on your site about whether captcha is integrated into the current system.  We're so swamped with spammers and bots trying to post on our boards, especially the .ru folks, but just don't have the energy or time anymore to go one by one with the validation thing to try and weed out real people from fake.   What we would like to do is simply have a captcha system integrated so that, if anyone (or anything) tries to post it has to validate via captcha.  (Actually, what we'd really like is to have members-only posting with member validation only through captcha. I don't mind validating real people.)

Anyway, is this feature part of the most recent version of EBlah?

Thanks,

stu

PS - Still wondering what steps we would need to take to get from Platinum 5 to the current versions with our membership and boards intact.

Hey Stu, eblah10.x does use captcha, however, you are still going to get a lot of those .ru knuckleheads trying to spam the board. The only way I found to get around the .ru domain was to validate everyone that signs up. If they have a .ru extension then I just delete them.

Thanks for the info.  If you don't mind . . . a couple of follow-ups?

Is there any way to just block and entire range of IP addresses?  Most of the spam comes through the RIPE network . . . I would have no problem just banning the entire range of addresses from there.

Also, do you know if there's a way to delete/not-validate a bunch of users all at once? With the Platinum 5 version, I have to go one at a time, which means a couple of screens . . . it takes a while to go through the list.

Thanks again,

stu

In 10.3.6 you can remove inactive users in mass quantities.

When you ban an IP address and you want to ban a large range, use 84.64. instead of 84.64.125.67 (no idea whose IP that is. I just made up)

I'd be careful mass deleting inactive users. You may actually delete a valid account, even if they have not been on your board in a while they may still want to visit it in the future. As far as the IP address ban that you are suggesting evixion, thanks for the heads up. I asked the same question stu asked a while back and never got an answer. That led me to have to validate everyone to keep the .ru knuckleheads off of my board. The last straw was when one of them slipped through before I had validation turned on and they spammed the hell out of my board.

Pls check your question in your posting Need to block certain domains

You'll find an answer was given to that particular posting, suggesting a method for banning a whole domain, such as the troublesome .ru domain.

For info though, I don't recommend it, I have activated E-Blah captcha and use the automatic validation option, and removed the modification described, and have not had .ru make a successful account registration since

Hi there.  We just had the latest version installed -- thanks Martin for your generous help -- and I'm looking through the various settings.  I'm trying to find where to activate Captcha and where I can ban entire domains, like the .ru stuff.

Thanks again for any help,

stu

Quoted from evixion

In 10.3.6 you can remove inactive users in mass quantities.

When you ban an IP address and you want to ban a large range, use 84.64. instead of 84.64.125.67 (no idea whose IP that is. I just made up)

Is there somewhere I can type in a whole range to ban though? For example, the Ripe Network has lots of "ranges."
I would love to just say "anything from 89.0.0.0 - 89.255.255.255 is banned" as opposed to putting in 89.0, 89.1, 89.2, etc..

stu

That is how evixion is saying to ban, "ranges" step down through the IP classes, a class C IP for instance is 123.123.123, etc... There aren't many class A and B IPs available and they're grouped together, so banning 84.64 is a massive class B and would block a huge proportion of the RIPE registry.

I wouldn't do this though, I wouldn't block sections of IP ranges to stop spammers, it's a losing battle you'll end up blocking the entire internet from visiting your site...
Look into other ways of preventing spam on the board...