Kunena 6.2.5 & module Kunena Latest 6.0.7 released

The Kunena team has announce the arrival of Kunena 6.2.5 [K 6.2.5] which is now available for download as a native Joomla extension for J! 4.3.x/4.4.x/5.0.x. This version addresses most of the issues that were discovered in K 6.1 / K 6.2 and issues discovered during the last development stages of K 6.2

This is for users to help other users, to discuss topics that are related to forum administration in general or problems in running Joomla. This is not the place to ask for Joomla support. If you want assistance with Joomla please ask at forum.joomla.org

Merged How to protect my forum from spam

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12 years 4 months ago - 12 years 4 months ago #211 by sozzled
That is not correct, WeedRoy. You can enable CAPTCHA for registered users too (in other words, you can have Forum Configuration » Security » Security Settings » Allow Guests to Post/Write = No).

Please start a new topic in the Common Questions category called "K 1.7.1: How to setup CAPTCHA for registered users" and I will give you (and anyone else who wants to know) the answer.
Last edit: 12 years 4 months ago by sozzled.

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12 years 4 months ago - 12 years 4 months ago #212 by sozzled

naimless wrote: Hi, I didn't want to raise the whole Captcha debate again ...

... except that you have raised it again. Please read Using CAPTCHA spam protection in Kunena

naimless wrote: I have upgraded to the new Kunena and enabled Recaptcha ... [but] since then I have been absolutely inundated by anonymous comment spam ...

The whole issue about spam on a forum is just that: an issue about how spam gets on your forum, any forum, even on forums that don't use Kunena.

A couple of years ago this discussion was started: How to protect my forum from spam? In this discussion everyone has sought to find the "silver bullet" solution with suggestions ranging from the absurd (e.g. sacrifice a few virgins to appease the pagan gods) to some other that are a little more reasonable. But the simple fact is that no-one - let me repeat that for everyone to hear - no-one has found a mechanism to completely eradicate spam from their forums.

I wrote (and you can quote me):

"The only truly effective remedy against spam is vigilance."

So, rather than re-opening the whole "the great CAPTCHA [non-]problem discussion" (and have it continue for another year) let's look at the real cause of the problem.

The real cause of the problem is that people are posting rubbish on your website and the real problem is how to discourage that. Unfortunately the options are somewhat limited but I am, nonetheless, willing to discuss these options in general terms. As far as your specific question is concerned - "Is reCAPTCHA actually working?" - that's a question you should address to the developers of reCAPTCHA.

As far as the incidence of spam on your website is concerned, you need to look at the causes of how spam messages are being created in the first place and, for that reason only, I've merged this topic with the even bigger one How to protect my forum from spam?
Last edit: 12 years 4 months ago by sozzled.
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12 years 4 months ago #213 by sozzled
G'day, gerald_k, and welcome to Kunena.

Kunena does not have any IP ban feature but there are many other ways to do that. You can, for example, ban IP addresses with Joomla components like Joomlawatch, via .htaccess or even with cPanel. The trouble with trying to ban IP addresses is, as we all know, not reliable because real spammers will simply change their IP base and try again if they're that intent on attacking your particular website.

The Kunena Ban User feature deletes multiple posts in one place. Therefore I think the answer to your question "[How can I] easily delete multiple posts from one user?" is, yes, you can.

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12 years 4 months ago - 12 years 4 months ago #214 by WeedRoy

sozzled wrote: That is not correct, WeedRoy. You can enable CAPTCHA for registered users too (in other words, you can have Forum Configuration » Security » Security Settings » Allow Guests to Post/Write = No).

Please start a new topic in the Common Questions category called "K 1.7.1: How to setup CAPTCHA for registered users" and I will give you (and anyone else who wants to know) the answer.



I do not know English so many, well, pls give me a direct link for that....
or tell me how can i do that...
tnx
Last edit: 12 years 4 months ago by sozzled. Reason: correct misquote

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12 years 4 months ago - 12 years 4 months ago #215 by sozzled
WeedRoy: It's up to you to start a new topic in the Common Questions category - create this topic with the subject "K 1.7.1: How to setup CAPTCHA for registered users" - and I will answer your question there. This topic - How to protect my forum from spam - is a general discussion about how to prevent (or lessen the incidence of) spam for any web-based forum. It is not appropriate to discuss here how to use standard features of K 1.7.1. Do you understand?
Last edit: 12 years 4 months ago by sozzled.

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12 years 4 months ago #216 by WeedRoy
ok tnx, i understand now...

TOPIC

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12 years 4 months ago #217 by naimless
Hi Sozzled, first off, thanks for your reply and your hard work. Second, I really do not want to criticise or take away from your and the Kunena team's fantastic efforts, so please please please take this feedback in the spirit of genuine goodwill it is intended, and please do not be too sarcastic in your reply this time although you must be fed up of Captcha issues. :)

The real cause of the problem is that people are posting rubbish on your website and the real problem is how to discourage that.


Very respectfully, I really disagree. I agree that spam can never be eradicated, but forum spam can be controlled effectively - for around 6 months with the hacked, custom non-changing captcha I described in the previous thread, barely a single guest spammer got through (except for when spammers managed to register a main Joomla account and would go haywire for a little while, which would happen every week or two). Obviously, my system worked only because it was obscure/unique and spammers couldn't be bothered to automate for it.

My problem is that now for some reason, the new 1.7.1 Re-Captcha implementation is not stopping unregistered bots from posting. Others in this thread seem to have the same problem.

Let me repeat for avoidance of doubt - right now the volume of spam that is posted by unregistered guests that clearly got past the Re-Captcha check is ridiculous - at least 30 a day - compared to none before.

There are three possibilities I see.

1. I am being stupid and installed Kunena 1.7.1 and Re-Captcha wrongly (which is possible, although yes, I did follow the wiki guide you linked to and it works as intended in the front-end).
2. Kunena's implementation of Re-Captcha is not working properly and there's an exploit.
3. Spammers now employ farms of people to crack Re-Captchas, in particular also automating Kunena forums protected by Re-Captcha.

I would like to know which of these you think is more likely. 1 or 2 would be easy to fix.

The third possibility is more worrying and means Re-Captcha has become worthless, not just for Kunena but every other site that uses it. If that is the case, I'll begrudgingly revert to hacking the code into a botch-job custom Captcha that did the trick. And yes, I will also happily raise it with the Re-Captcha devs.

Again, I don't want to rant but this is something I really believe can be improved, even though the majority of users probably run registration-only forums and don't run into this.

Also, again a big thanks to Matias for taking the time to integrate ReCaptcha. I think Kunena is on a good path and this Captcha thing we can sort out too! :)

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12 years 4 months ago #218 by naimless
In this vein, I wanted to plug the SpamFighter component again.

Everyone struggling with spam in Kunena (or 2 other forums) should try it. In 2 days of using it, it's blocked at least 90% of the spammy posts without much training so far.

Plus, it adds a funky 'spam' button in the Kunena front-end that automatically deletes the post and trains the Bayes database. Plus, in the back-end you can ban the IPs of all the spammers with two clicks.

If it trains itself to be a tiny bit better in its detection, I might just consider turning Captcha off completely... :) Honestly, try it out, it's magical - would love to hear your feedback.

extensions.joomla.org/extensions/access-...ty/site-access/16331

(I'm not affiliated with these guys, obviously! :) )

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12 years 4 months ago #219 by naimless
Oh god, now I am depressed. The Onlywire mass social media submission service coincidentally just sent me an email saying that they are now offering Captcha solving.

So I googled "Captcha Solver" and one of the hits down the page (I don't want to even name the site to give it any google juice) offers: "An incredible low price of $1.39 for 1000 solved CAPTCHAs." Apparently they use a combination of OCR and a "24/7" team of Captcha solvers.

So does this mean that any Captcha is basically dead now as a security measure?

The internet is doomed... :ohmy:

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12 years 4 months ago - 12 years 4 months ago #220 by LittleJohn
Hi

I havent read the whole thread, but I can give some insight and answer your question;

Yes - captcha farms does exists and people are getting paid to solve them (i read about that 6 years ago). Imho that will happen with anything that is solveable by humans too.
So nothing new here.

I worked as a webmaster at an open forum (no need to register to write) for four years and we recieved at that time under 1% spam (of the total # of postings). So it is highly possible.

What Im trying to say is, that there are many other ways to deal with spam and we are trying to solve this as best as possible in Kunena 2.0. Both natively and by plugin.

In the mean time I'd recommend to turn on captcha in K1.7 and also find a plugin that can do it for the Joomla registration form to prevent bots from signing up.
Last edit: 12 years 4 months ago by LittleJohn. Reason: Typo
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