banned AhrefsBot - been attacking us similarly like baidubot

[andy1]

happy halloween from me too!!

ok, i had to make a change to my little htaccess mod so now it says:

Code: Select all

BrowserMatchNoCase AhrefsBot bad_bot
BrowserMatchNoCase Baiduspider bad_bot
Order Deny,Allow
Deny from env=bad_bot

because i had ahrefsbot 3.0 banned and that worked fine until yesterday when i noticed ahrefsbot 4.0 around, also attacking us in huge numbers like before - omitting the version numbers worked like a charm so pls try that if you are still using htaccess mod to ban bots.

[sidv220]

Hi Andy,

Ahrefs bot will still get in :-( They also use Amazon Cloud service and choopa.net cloud service. It does not identify itself as an ahrefs bot through some cloud services. They are nasty and unethical. It was ahref bot which prompted me to research and found zbblock.

[Blue Frost]

Well you seem to have researched really well Sid, you have a lot of info, and knowledge of them it seems.

[sidv220]

Well you seem to have researched really well Sid, you have a lot of info, and knowledge of them it seems.

Thanks Blue,
I learn the IT as a hobby... well something I can use to generate side income when I retire ... lol

I never used phpBB. After finding this forum, out of curiosity, I installed phpBB on 2freehosting.com (a free web service. It is one of the best free web hosting service with no ads). To my surprise zbblock is not so efficient at phpBB hosted forums. I installed it last week, and I had 1000 spam fake registration within 8 days. At my Wordpress sites, 99% of spammers are denied access. It looks like phpBB is a magnet for bots/spam and the bots developers have perfected the codes for phpBB hosted forums.

Anyway, it is a learning exercise. I am tweaking zbblock to make sure it kills 99% of them on my trial phpBB hosted forum.

[Blue Frost]

Yeah phpbb is a mess with that stuff, and not much you can do to keep it totally out.
As for them posting you can set the settings, I don't get them anymore, and this site don't like they used to get.
Settings in the ACP lets you set it where it ask them a question.
Mine is what is the name in the logo. Some of the easier questions they get like color of the sky.

[sidv220]

I am only experimenting on how to maximize killing spam bots. I am not going to use it for any production purpose.

[Blue Frost]

I started my forum just to learn the ins and outs, but some great people migrated in, and I was sold :-)
I hate the maintenance, and sql stuff, but for them Ill try to keep it going.
It might not look like much since there isn't many on it most the time, but that don't matter.

[GuardianFlash]

sup sidv220? Any ideas to improve this forum?

[sidv220]

Guardian,

What would you and other like to see?
I would suggest turning message notification on. At present, members do not know if a reply was posted. One had to regularly check for replies and new threads.
Second, I will suggest a WYSWYG get editor.

[Blue Frost]

WYSWYG gui editor ?, What you see is what you get lol
I don't even know what it is besides the silly name.

Hi Sid, hope your well, Hi GF

[sidv220]

WYSWYG gui editor ?, What you see is what you get lol
I don't even know what it is besides the silly name.

Hi Sid, hope your well, Hi GF

lol. It could be any editor, like TinyMCE, and FCKEditor etc.

Blue, I am fine, except too many things are going on at once.

[Blue Frost]

Hope your not too overwhelmed, hopefully the weekend helps, it's almost here.

So whats the Editor for Coding ? I use notepad++ myself if so .
Might not have all the bells, and whistles, but gets the job done.

[andy1]

hi boys!:)

i think sid is referring to the reply window editor, blue - it would be much neater to lose the tags and BBcode and just - wysiwyg:)

for what it's worth, i just wanted to report that my little edit of htaccess worked like a charm so i'm very pleased about that.

[sidv220]

Blue,
I was referring to editor for reply. I also use Notepad++ or Codelobster for coding. Also, spambotsecurity had released an update for signature.inc. They had tighten spam bot security even more.

Nah! weekend did not provide relief :-)

[sidv220]

hi boys!:)

i think sid is referring to the reply window editor, blue - it would be much neater to lose the tags and BBcode and just - wysiwyg:)

for what it's worth, i just wanted to report that my little edit of htaccess worked like a charm so i'm very pleased about that.

You can still do tags and bbCode with ywsiwyg editor. Usually they have buttons for the tags.