Modification: Scam Filter
 

Prevent scammers from registering an account or contacting your members. This helps prevent spam, chargebacks, and irate customers.

This module integrates with your user registration form and listings' contact form and gives you control over the countries from which these forms may be used.

• Configurable whitelist of countries that you can tailor to your site's audience
• Works silently behind the scenes so would-be scammers are unaware they are being filtered
• Includes its own admin area within your 68C AdminCP (to configure the whitelist)
• Automated install - only one line of code to insert
• Purchase includes 1 full year of updates at no extra cost

How it Works

1) When a visitor uses a listing's contact form to contact the listing's owner, the visitor's country (based on their IP address) is checked against your list of allowed countries. If the country is allowed, the email is sent to the listing owner per normal procedure. If it is not allowed, the email is sent to the Site Admin email address only.

2) When a visitor signs up, the visitor's country (based on their IP address) is checked against your list of allowed countries. If the country is NOT allowed his user level is immediately changed to level 4 ("Banned" by default) and he is unable to log in.

Click here to view the full details.

If you have any questions or need support with this modification please reply below.

Hey guys! This mod works perfectly. I am sitting here right now watching the flagged scammer emails appear on my crackberry instead of going to the vendors. I cannot imagine running a site with any high-value products without this in place. Worth every cent.

I am considering to purchase this mod.
CIV how do I know that the spam has been not sent to my customer?
Also, is it possible to block the certain IP NetRanges instead of all country?

Sergey, emails that are caught by the filter are redirected to you and arrive with the subject line altered so that you can pick them out easily. You can be sure that they were not sent to your customers if they arrive in your inbox like so:



As to the ability to ban IP ranges, we have that on our roadmap for a future version.

I installed the module on some of my subdomains.
Is there anyway to test it?

PS: CIV, do you have some friends in Nigeria that can test it for me? :D

Just remove your country from the list in the admin panel and send a mail from your site. It should be tagged. Once you see it working, just put your country back in again (exactly as it was).

Thanks B.Gordon, good idea. Install that I did was on live site, so I was not thinking about this.
I need to install it on my test site in order to check it.

Bgordon had it right - just remove your own country from the list of accepted countries and give it a shot on a test listing. If you do it right you can have your country filtered for only 30sec or so, so even on a live site that shouldn't be a problem.

Alternately, you could use a proxy from a country not in your accepted list.

Test it, working perfect.
Absolutely agree with B.Gordon

HELP! Install SCAM FILTER module, but errors
 

Help...
I followed the instructions for the scam filter and I am getting errors...

once I go to the module panel to initialize I get the following error:
_______________________________________________
Internal Server Error

The server encountered an internal error or misconfiguration and was unable to complete your request.

Please contact the server administrator, [email protected] and inform them of the time the error occurred, and anything you might have done that may have caused the error.
More information about this error may be available in the server error log.

Additionally, a 404 Not Found error was encountered while trying to use an ErrorDocument to handle the request. Apache/1.3.37 Server at www.buckeye-classifieds.com Port 80 ______________________________________ Here is the error log from the server: [Wed Feb 14 17:04:47 2007] [error] [client 72.241.106.162] File does not exist: /home/buckeyec/public_html/500.shtml[Wed Feb 14 17:04:47 2007] [error] [client 72.241.106.162] Premature end of script headers: /home/buckeyec/public_html/administration/managemodules.phpHELP... PLEASE!

Hi dawyatt,

A couple possibilities - first off, do you have access to your Apache error logs? It should have more detailed error information. Also, would it be possible to deactivate/reactivate another module to ensure your managemodules.php file is working correctly? I just want to rule out the possibility that all modules are affected by this problem.

When you uploaded the module did you use the BINARY mode on your FTP program? Alternately, you may rename the .PHP files to .BIN, upload them, and rename them back to .PHP.

Thanks,
Civ

error log text
 

here is the error log text:
[Wed Feb 14 17:50:41 2007] [error] [client 72.241.106.162] File does not exist: /home/buckeyec/public_html/500.shtml[Wed Feb 14 17:50:41 2007] [error] [client 72.241.106.162] Premature end of script headers: /home/buckeyec/public_html/administration/managemodules.php[Wed Feb 14 17:50:34 2007] [error] [client 72.241.106.162] File does not exist: /home/buckeyec/public_html/500.shtml[Wed Feb 14 17:50:34 2007] [error] [client 72.241.106.162] Premature end of script headers: /home/buckeyec/public_html/administration/managemodules.php[Wed Feb 14 17:50:19 2007] [error] [client 72.241.106.162] File does not exist: /home/buckeyec/public_html/500.shtml[Wed Feb 14 17:50:19 2007] [error] [client 72.241.106.162] Premature end of script headers: /home/buckeyec/public_html/administration/managemodules.php[Wed Feb 14 17:43:32 2007] [error] [client 72.241.106.162] File does not exist: /home/buckeyec/public_html/500.shtml[Wed Feb 14 17:43:32 2007] [error] [client 72.241.106.162] Premature end of script headers: /home/buckeyec/public_html/administration/managemodules.php_________________________________ _I have not had any other errors with my other modules... use the news module pretty much everyday....Problem started with the installation of this module... I have uploaded in binary (at least I thought).. I will try your renaming as you suggest... dawyatt...

deactivate and reactivate works fine...
 

I just deactivated the ad notification module and reactivated it with no problems..

Let me know if uploading the PHP files again (in binary mode or renamed to .bin) helps. If not, I'll recreate the package and email it to you again (using a different encryption method).

Thanks,
Civ

Okay...
 

CIV,

I uploaded the files as you suggested and that worked!

Thanks... I am looking forward to seeing how this mod works... I can also look forward to spending all the time I spent on deleting scammers on something fun!

dawyatt

Excellent! I'd love to hear your thoughts on the module after you've used it awhile. Have fun scamming the scammers. :D

Thanks,
Civ

I think it's working???
 

CIV,

I think the mod is working since I did not have to delete bogus id's today...which is what I have had to do pretty much everyday prior to the mod install...

Question: how do I know it's working... I thought I was going to receive an email...

Again, it may be working and today was one of those rare days where no one from Nigeria or outside of the US decided to post....

thoughts?

This mod performs two functions now (as of v1.1): it auto-bans anyone from non-whitelisted countries as soon as they register, and it prevents those same individuals from using the contact form on your listings (well actually it redirects the contact emails to you instead of your listing owners, enabling you to track [mis]usage).

So if you're looking to see if unwanted visitors are being banned go to Search Members in your 68C AdminCP, choose Banned Users from the User Group field and click Search. That will show you all of your banned accounts.

If you don't have any in there yet and you want to test it, the easiest way is to remove your own country from the whitelist in our mod's Admin section and then signup yourself (and use the contact form on a listing to test that portion of the mod). Then check via the above method (Search Members) to see if your new test account is banned, and check your admin email account for the contact attempt you made. Also don't forget to put your country back in the whitelist! :)

An update!
 

Just wanted to give kudos to CIV...

Great mod!

I went from spending about an hour each day dealing with unwanted scammers to spending nada, niltch, zeroooooooooooooo time on it!

I HIGHLY recommend this mod to EVERYONE!

dawyatt ;)