phpBB Email Banlist Stop Spam on Your Forum

If you run the latest version of phpBB3 use this shortcut. For other users don’t let spammers take over your forum. Fight back! There’s nothing worse than creating a forum like phpBB or blog like WordPress spending countless hours posting and generating traffic only to have it over run with spam. Often forcing you to use strict CAPTCHA antispam features with a high severity scramble and even close new member registrations yet the spammers still get in!

Stopping Spam

Keeping your forum or blog up-to-date with the latest available version of core files is frontline defense. Then mods like StopForumSpam for phpBB3 will check username/email/ip against the StopForumSpam.com 561682 list of spammers through an API. Much like Akismet does which is another good antispam method. The advantage of setting up an API is new members and posts are checked against a growing maintained database rather then bloating your own database with 561682 entries.

Further Spam Protection

Further protection can be applied in the phpBB Administrator control panel. You can ban users by username, IP address, email address and common spam words. You can also ban multiple addresses and words at once by separating them with a comma in phpBB 2.x and line breaks in phpBB 3.x. Additionally WordPress, Movable Type, phpBB3 and Simple Machines all support wildcards * so you can ban *@*.ru to stop any users registering/posting if their email ends in .ru. Another example: *@hate.net,*@spam.com will ban anyone@hate.net and anyone@spam.com from registering.

I compiled these lists of email addresses, spam words, spam IP numbers, bad robots, grabbers website leechers and copiers to ban over the years. I found them to be quite effective so offer them here for free. Of the 12,434 email addresses currently contained in the list most are ‘free’ email account providers and/or known spammers. Gmail Hotmail and Yahoo mail are not listed. You’ll see at the very start I have banned all .info and .ru addresses by *@*.info,*@*.ru You may want to remove these and peruse the list further, that’s up to you.

Add a Banlist to Your Forum or Blog in 3 Easy Steps

1) Copy – Click a list, right-click to select all, right-click to copy. OR – right-click on the link and select Save Target As. Locate the file on your computer and open it with Notepad or similar, highlight all addresses, right-click and select copy.

2) Paste – Login to your phpBB forum administration panel. On the left at the bottom under the User Admin section click Ban Control. On the right you should see, “Ban one or more email addresses”. Right-click on the input box and select Paste.

3) Submit – Click the Submit button.

Our lists have been formatted in Notepad and Microsoft Word to suit phpBB. It’s easy to manipulate our lists to suit your need. Simply use the Find and Replace feature in Word Notepad or Simpletext to make it compatible to other forums and blogs. If you would like to add to our Banlists please post in our Forum or here in the comments section below.

Your additions can help others stop blog spam. Our thanks to Satis and Tim for their contributions to our ban lists. Now even more common spam words and known spammer domain names to ban. Happy blogging!

Kind Regards,
Croc Hunter
Webmaster

21 thoughts on “phpBB Email Banlist Stop Spam on Your Forum

  1. A big thank you for all the work you’ve put into those lists.

    I have two questions:

    1. How regularly do you update those lists and do you ever actually remove IP’s/emails from them when they become redundant and are no longer used by spammers?

    2. The email and IP lists are quite huge. Would these not considerably slow down a forum as well as place a high degree of load on the server? Or, is this not an issue?

    I’m considering giving them a try, but I have concerns about server load as well as how current the lists are.

  2. We haven’t updated these lists for some time now Michael. phpBB3.06 introduced many security improvements and by setting these correctly you should not need to hand code .htaccess files. After a great deal of research, trial and error, I discovered a way to make a flood of spammers grind to a halt.

    The answer to number 2 is; yes but only slightly. Spammers hammering your forum with requests, ilegitimate user registrations, old unused logs etc will cause far more cpu, query and banwidth load and database bloat.

    If your forum needs an upgrade or serious overhaul I am for hire.

  3. I also noticed many of the bot/crawlers in your list were also the same ones often trying to crawl my old WordPress site. I’d blocked many of those but the old .htaccess file of mine got lost somewhere. I’d have to find a backup and compare.

    If you happen to read this, would you also have any experience with phpBB-slowing bots or crawlers? Every now and then my users are complaining of low-responsiveness and timeouts at odd times like, timezone comparatively, 3AM, when the majority of my users are on around 8 hours or so later. And since I’m not on at those times, I’ve never been able to use my VPS’s console and find out where the connections are coming from.

    Also, thanks for the list, regardless of its last update. Still useful.

  4. Hi DatapawWolf, a bot hammering your site can can slow it as you know, check your HTTP or MySQL logs. But from what you describe it sounds more like your VPS hosting provider is backing up all data on the server. I work for a shared hosting company in Boston. They do so in off-peak times, usually early hours of the morning to process faster and minimise errors. Ask your host what time they run backups.

  5. Hi,

    thank you for this list.

    But I have a question?

    How do I add the word-spam-list to my forum, one at a time ?

    Thank You,

  6. Hi Gorco, what forum type and version are you running? To add them in phpBB3 version 3.0.11 under “word censoring” unless you know how to run an SQL statement on your database yes you will have to add them one at a time. A better anti-spam technique in that case is to use custom fields like our forum here does. For a small fee I can cease a flood of spam user registrations and posts on your forum in a matter of minutes.

  7. Thanks for these, much appreciated. I get the odd spammer every now and then, but just got spam-bombed by about 30 users. Suffice to say, most were from *.ru, though there were a lot logging in from *@dontdlsp.tk which I notice isn’t on your list.

  8. I have a question: I copied the email and the IP list into my banlists and since nobody can register anymore (they get a blank page) and when I try to access the banlist for emails, I get a blank page as well. Can you help out? Much appreciated.

  9. Hi Lica, it sounds as though the process stalled halfway through. Reinstall a previous backup of your database. If you do not have one your host might. Failing that run a repair on the broken database via MySQL. If none of that helps you can hire one of us to see whats going on and fix it. As you are running phpBB3 we can also spam proof your forum without using the lists.

  10. I’ve added ip addess ban list but now my forum is crashing….

    Fatal error: Allowed memory size of 314572800 bytes exhausted (tried to allocate 20 bytes) in /home/verwijs/domains/verwijs-pc.nl/public_html/forum/includes/acp/acp_ban.php on line 249

    how do i add more memeory to ip address ban list…??

  11. Hi Andre, add half the list, wait an hour, add the other half. Alternatively you may be able to increase your memory limit through your host control panel php.ini file. Otherwise phpBB3 allows the creation of a custom field, we find that stops %99 of automated spam. You will see what I’m talking about if you try to register on our forum. The three digit code.

  12. Hello Admin,

    Thanks for providing those spam lists. I have added them to mine. Although I don’t have a forum I do own several websites and am currently having a crackdown on spammers and scrapers. I am happy to share with you those I have collected so far, together with some extra words that do not appear your list.

    Although in marketing myself, spammers are the bane of our existence, they have messed up an entire industry and given it a bad name in general.

    I am currently installing several honeypot traps on all my sites, that will cause many of these bots to crash and burn, making it a more ‘hands off’ approach.

    I am using projecthoneypot.org as a starting point.

    Keep up the good work.
    Although I have posted a link to my website, I will not be offended if you do not publish this post, but just use the data provided. :-)

    Best regards
    Tim

    Bad IP List

    103.6.237.67
    105.228.16.114
    144.76.72.214
    162.220.9.241
    166.63.127.244
    172.245.32.48
    174.123.132.242
    176.31.83.172
    176.31.85.72
    184.154.116.125
    184.168.112.26
    190.113.211.62
    192.208.185.234
    192.3.147.226
    198.23.135.152
    204.12.234.3
    210.188.201.134
    210.210.178.20
    212.89.9.133
    221.132.33.89
    46.4.231.86
    5.135.178.124
    5.9.65.140
    64.34.173.227
    75.127.110.6
    77.244.245.82
    80.48.31.18
    80.48.31.188
    83.20.48.132
    83.23.250.85
    83.96.132.85
    87.255.57.169
    91.135.16.3
    92.243.5.8
    92.243.5.80
    92.243.6.12
    115.59.88.84
    182.114.231.241
    199.15.233.130
    199.15.233.142
    208.177.76.7
    87.98.230.195
    204.93.54.174
    94.23.176.98
    204.93.54.166
    208.177.76.22
    5.135.178.124
    62.141.44.187
    69.26.175.177
    37.59.162.234
    208.177.76.8
    5.135.181.114
    198.27.98.168
    204.93.54.176
    208.177.76.25
    208.177.76.14

    Bad User Agents

    103.6.237.67
    105.228.16.114
    144.76.72.214
    162.220.9.241
    166.63.127.244
    172.245.32.48
    174.123.132.242
    176.31.83.172
    176.31.85.72
    184.154.116.125
    184.168.112.26
    190.113.211.62
    192.208.185.234
    192.3.147.226
    198.23.135.152
    204.12.234.3
    210.188.201.134
    210.210.178.20
    212.89.9.133
    221.132.33.89
    46.4.231.86
    5.135.178.124
    5.9.65.140
    64.34.173.227
    75.127.110.6
    77.244.245.82
    80.48.31.18
    80.48.31.188
    83.20.48.132
    83.23.250.85
    83.96.132.85
    87.255.57.169
    91.135.16.3
    92.243.5.8
    92.243.5.80
    92.243.6.12
    115.59.88.84
    182.114.231.241
    199.15.233.130
    199.15.233.142
    208.177.76.7
    87.98.230.195
    204.93.54.174
    94.23.176.98
    204.93.54.166
    208.177.76.22
    5.135.178.124
    62.141.44.187
    69.26.175.177
    37.59.162.234
    208.177.76.8
    5.135.181.114
    198.27.98.168
    204.93.54.176
    208.177.76.25
    208.177.76.14

    Bad Words

    viagara
    cialis
    pharmacy
    weblog
    brussels
    cousin
    viagra
    lotto
    nfl
    louis vitton
    handbags
    shoes
    chick
    chicks
    casino
    gambling
    credit card
    payday loan
    loan
    mortgage
    enlargement
    hardcore
    insurance
    investment
    levitra
    loans
    naked
    nude
    cigarette
    cigarettes
    pills
    pharma
    ring tone
    ring tones
    mobi
    shop
    tramadol
    holdem
    poker
    jeans
    outlet
    ray ban
    ray bans
    bags
    discount
    discounted
    sale
    jersey
    jerseys
    authentic
    nike
    shox
    Doudoune Femme moncler
    outlet
    homme
    cgi
    religion
    carrera
    frauen
    jordan
    air jordan
    belstaff
    ugg
    jimmy choo
    stumbled

  13. dont fall for any lists, they might be used by hackers themselves to search out your forum and attack it..

  14. That’s the silliest thing I’ve heard in a long time. Like, I might swallow a coin and die one day, so if I just never swallow again I’ll be fine. Hackers do not care about anti-spam lists and when used correctly .htaccess is invisible.

  15. Hello there

    Nice list you have, i have already implemented the email IDs but i dont know where am to paste the Ban words in phpbb

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