[For 1.6] [release] [updated for 1.6] Stopforumspam.com plugin for MyBB - Stop the Spam!

[pavemen]

I built my own MyBB plugin for StopForumSpam last year. If you are going to maintain this plugin, I have a few suggestions (that I use and found very effective)

1. Add a setting for minimum matches for each filter type. Since SFS API will return the number of entries for each item queried, you can reduce false positives by only rejecting registrations from say IPs that have been reported 3 or more times. I let the admin specify the min required for each filter type
   
2. Add AND/OR option, though I think that is what your last setting may be??
   
3. Add the ability to automatically add a user to the SFS database during the banning process via Admin > Users > Banning. I have four check boxes I added to that page. Registration IP, Last Known IP, Username, and Email
   
4. SFS is getting very busy and seeing a lot of server load. If the site using your plugin meets abuse criteria via API overuse, then they will be denied access and your plugin will fail. I built my plugin with a Cache First Then API option. What happens is that the entire SFS database gets downloaded and manually installed on the site's database. This can take a very long time and often means multiple phpMyAdmin imports (sinec SFS only allows CVS export). After that, a MyBB task downloads the previous days SFS updates (since you can specify dates during the search) and appends those to the cache on the users system. The plugin will search the cache first and if the criteria for denial is met, then the registration is banned and the SFS site is not hit. If the criteria is not met, then it will hit the SFS site via the API.
   
5. Do not send admin emails and track the denials. I do not send the admin notes. My plugin has a 'catch' table that will dump the denied registration info with which rule tripped. "EMAIL", "IP", "USERNAME" plus the value of that rule that was entered and the date attempted. What is also captured is the number of attempts a specific rule and value have been attempted (via update query with attempts=attempts+1, and if that has no affects rows, then do an insert query)
   

My cache table has nearly 350,000 records with IP, username and email of reported spammers. Many are repeated, so I filter and count on each field independently.

My catch table has 1,450 records, but 5,800 total attempts that have been blocked since I started tracking with my new MyBB install (I converted my 1+ million post forum to MyBB in Oct 2009)

I have had to ban a dozen or so spammers since I started using it, and those spammers were not listed at all in the SFS database, so it was not an issue of not meeting the denial criteria.