FoF Anti Spam

A Flarum extension. Effective tools to manage spammers on your community

Features

Content Filtering (New!)

Automatically detect and prevent spam content from new users before it becomes visible:

• Automatic Detection: Monitors posts and discussions from recently registered users for common spam indicators

  • Phone numbers in international format
  • Email addresses
  • Suspicious URLs not on your allowlist
  • Custom blocked words and phrases
  • Advanced regex pattern matching

• Smart User Targeting: Only monitors users within their first few posts or hours after registration

• Flexible Actions:

  • Automatically flag suspicious content for moderator review (requires flarum/flags)
  • Send suspicious content to approval queue (requires flarum/approval)
  • Configurable spam score thresholds (0-100)

• Custom Flag Type: Uses a dedicated spam flag type with prominent score display to distinguish automatic detections from user reports

• Configurable via Admin UI or Code: Full configuration through admin panel, or use extend.php for advanced customization

User Management

• Set default actions to be processed when a user is marked as a "spammer"
• Select either "delete" or "suspend" for users
• Select "delete", "hide" or "move to tag" for spam discussions
• Select either "delete" or "hide" for spam replies

StopForumSpam Integration

• Option to submit spammer details to the StopForumSpam database
• Check new registrations against the StopForumSpam database to block spammers before they can register on your forum
• Supports OAuth registrations (fof/oauth, fof/passport)
• Configurable confidence and frequency thresholds
• Regional endpoint selection for compliance

Configuration

Basic Setup (Admin UI)

All settings can be configured through the admin panel:

1. Navigate to Extensions → FoF Anti Spam → Settings
2. Enable content filtering
3. Configure user targeting (post count, account age)
4. Enable detectors (phones, emails, URLs)
5. Set spam score thresholds
6. Configure automatic actions (flag/unapprove)
7. Add allowed domains and blocked words

Advanced Configuration (extend.php)

For programmatic configuration or version-controlled settings, you can configure the extension in your forum's extend.php:

use FoF\AntiSpam\Extend\ContentFilter;
use FoF\AntiSpam\ContentFilter\Detectors\PhoneDetector;

return [
    // ... your other extenders ...

    // Configure content filtering
    (new ContentFilter())
        // Enable/disable content filtering
        ->enabled(true)

        // User targeting: monitor users within first N posts
        ->monitorUsersUpToPostCount(5)

        // User targeting: monitor users within first N hours
        ->monitorUsersUpToHoursOld(24)

        // Domain allowlist
        ->allowDomain('youtube.com')
        ->allowDomain('github.com')
        ->allowDomains(['stackoverflow.com', 'wikipedia.org'])

        // Custom domain validation
        ->allowDomainCallback(function ($uri, $user) {
            return str_ends_with($uri->getHost(), '.mycompany.com');
        })

        // Block specific patterns (regex)
        ->blockPattern('/\b(viagra|cialis)\b/i', 'Pharmaceutical spam')
        ->blockPattern('/\bcrypto\s*currency\b/i', 'Cryptocurrency spam')

        // Enable/disable detectors
        ->blockPhoneNumbers(true)
        ->blockEmailAddresses(true)
        ->blockUrls(true)

        // Spam score thresholds (0-100)
        // Each detector awards 50 points per match
        // Default: 50 for both (single detection triggers actions)
        ->spamScoreThreshold(50)  // Auto-unapprove threshold
        ->flagScoreThreshold(50)   // Auto-flag threshold

        // Enable automatic actions
        ->enableAutoUnapprove(true)  // Requires flarum/approval
        ->enableAutoFlag(true)        // Requires flarum/flags

        // System user for automatic flags
        ->assignFlagsToModerator(1)  // User ID (defaults to 1)

        // Disable specific detectors if needed
        ->disableDetector(PhoneDetector::class),
];

Configuration set via extend.php will override admin UI settings and be displayed as read-only in the admin panel.

How Content Filtering Works

Spam Score System

The content filtering system uses a point-based spam scoring mechanism:

• Each detector awards 50 points per match (capped at 80-100 points per detector)
• Multiple detections stack up to create a cumulative score
• Default thresholds are set to 50 points (meaning a single detection triggers actions)

Example: A post containing both a phone number and an email address would score 100 points, triggering both flagging and unapproval (if enabled).

Custom Flag Type

This extension uses a custom spam flag type for automatic detections:

• Spam score is stored in the flag's reason field
• Detection details are stored in the reason_detail field
• Display format: "Automatic Spam Detection - score {score}"
• Provides clear visual distinction from user-reported flags

Detection Methods

Phone Number Detector

• Matches international phone numbers with + or 00 prefix
• Requires at least 9 digits
• Examples: +1234567890, 00 123 456 7890

Email Detector

• Matches standard email addresses
• Example: [email protected]

URL Detector

• Matches HTTP/HTTPS URLs
• Checks against allowlist (your forum domain is auto-allowlisted)
• Example: http://suspicious-site.com

Pattern Detector (Blocked Words)

• Case-insensitive matching
• Whole word boundary matching (e.g., "viagra" matches "viagra" but not "niagara")
• Supports multi-word phrases (e.g., "crypto pump")
• Advanced: Custom regex patterns via extend.php

Requirements

• Flarum 2.0+
• PHP 8.2+

More integrations

Future integrations with extensions such as:

• fof/user-bio
• fof/upload

and more, are planned soon.

Installation

Install with composer:

composer require fof/anti-spam:"*"

Updating

composer update fof/anti-spam
php flarum migrate
php flarum cache:clear

Links

• Packagist
• GitHub
• Discuss

An extension by FriendsOfFlarum.