Forum access only to those showing IP-addresses

Loking for a script to prevent posting without IP-address

[instand1]

Recently our forum gets spammed with postings from persons/bots without IP-Adress.

Does any one have a script that sends all postings without an IP-Address straight to the recycling-bin?

(we hesitate to ask for registration before visitors can post, but we will be forced to do so, if we can not stop the spammers. Banning IP-addresses (from other language areas) so far has been a good way to keep spam at a reasonably low level.)

[RonPK]

No IP addresses, are you sure? TCP/IP can't do much without them...

Anyway, this may get you going:

if (empty($_SERVER['REMOTE_ADDR'])) { 
  die('Ha ha'); 
}

$_SERVER['REMOTE_ADDR'] usually holds the IP address.

[surrealillusions]

we hesitate to ask for registration before visitors can post

I would of thought that is almost as common on the internet as is air in our atmosphere...

If you make the registration process quick and painless, you will stand to benefit and get rid of most of the spam.

:)

On the contrary, have you thought about a captcha type question before the post is submitted?

[instand1]

I have to check, whether the IP-address is really hidden or not recorded by our scripts.

Captcha: The Captcha integrated into SMF-Forum is not really simple, many of our not so computer-literate visitors get frustrated. Do you know a really simple Captcha?

[RonPK]

To clarify, be IP address I mean something like

123.123.123.123

. To my best knowlegde there is no way to communicate over the internet without an IP address.

Perhaps you're referring to the host name? They often look like

123-123-123-123.provider.tld

. But not every IP address can be translated into a host name, so perhaps that's where your current filter doesn't work.

[Br3nn4n]

To my best knowlegde there is no way to communicate over the internet without an IP address.

these spammers never fail to amaze me, what with their "defeating the basic rules of the internet" skillz and all :)

don't let me sound patronizing, that's not how I mean that lol. I've never worked with SMF but you could probably find out from them where the Captcha is generated from [what file] when enabled. Then edit that file's PHP code to a more basic cypher, that's not so hard for others to figure out..if you know basic PHP (I'm assuming you do) this isn't hard.

good luck keepin the goonies out, it's a struggle for all of us!

[instand1]

Thank you for your answers.

After checking the log-files it became clear that the IP-addresses were not hidden. The script used by us did not record the ip-address. Therefore I thought the ip-address was hidden.