#1 2023-04-25 8:58 pm

e_jane_aran

Member

Registered: 2023-04-25

Posts: 2

how to interpret items in approval queue

I am a forum moderator. The owner is fairly out of touch, so I can't ask him about what he's installed. That's why I'm here.

It's a XenForo forum. As a moderator, I go through the approval queue to check out new registrations and posts of new users.

My question is about how to interpret what I'm seeing in said queue.

If a new registration has an email like i.am.a.scammy.sp.am.mer.ran.dom.let.ters@throwaway-email.com, I am fairly confident that the registration is not from a good person. If the new registration lists something like "StopForumSpam matched (email: 10327, ip: 1429), Shared IP with banned users (badguy, badguy, badguy, badgirl, badguy, badguy)", I am fairly confident that StopFormSpam has legitimately flagged a badguy/girl.

But I'm a bit at sea when it comes to new registrations that say things like "StopForumSpam matched (email: blacklisted, ip: 3)", "StopForumSpam matched (email: 1581, ip: 2)", or "StopForumSpam matched (ip: 68)". I have been unable to locate instructions for what things like "ip: 68" or "email: 1581" mean, or how to interpret "email: blacklisted".

Kindly please forgive my ignorance, and advise (or provide a link to a helpful URL). Thank you!

Alex Kemp

Moderator

From: Nottingham, England

Registered: 2009-12-02

Posts: 2,424

Website

Re: how to interpret items in approval queue

Hello e_jane_aran, welcome to SFS.

We immediately hit a common problem in trying to answer your post: mods like me & many users can mostly answer any question which directly references SFS, but your question is directly about XenForo & whichever plugin your owner has installed & which interacts with SFS. The SFS-connected bits I can mostly guess at, but the plugin-specific bits I can only half-guess at.

You need to find which specific plugin is being used, then find it's support site, and read through the documentation. A DDG search for "XenForo forum stopforumspam plugin" has XF2 as the 1st result but there are many, many plugins that it could be, and I know nothing about XenForo.

Here is some general help:

• email is the best signifier for you, closely followed by IP.
   
  Remember that blocking an IP will block *everybody* that uses that IP, which could be many 10,000s of people, so be careful there.

• "StopForumSpam matched"
   
  Check carefully that this does, indeed, mean that SFS has reported that the email (as example) is in the DB that many times. If yes, then you can make a definite decision. However, remember that, whilst you can block whoever you wish (your forum, your rules), you can NOT report someone back to SFS unless they have actually spammed you.
   
  If you want to double-check, the search link at top (the one that says "FAQ | Add Spam Data | ***Search*** | Forum | Resources | User Panel | Removal" will allow you to manually search on an email or IP.

• "email: blacklisted"
   
  Some email domains are so toxic that the entire domain gets blacklisted. This means that "anything> @ toxic‑domain.com" will get flagged by our DB (it is mostly full-domains, but a single email address could conceivably also get so-flagged).

HTH

---

Alex Kemp

IP Aggregation (Help) · Easy Firewall Generator (Help)  · Conteg v0.13.14

e_jane_aran

Member

Registered: 2023-04-25

Posts: 2

Re: how to interpret items in approval queue

Thank you for the information and for your advice!