ScamNet from AntonLV

Hello everybody.

This is a support forum for our ScamNet module.

If you have some questions or suggestions regarding it feel free to post them here or contact us directly.

The mod works well with Dolphin 7.0.9?

 Yes, sure. It is compatible with any Dolphin version 7.0.X

Hello everybody.
The module was updated. It's available for Dolphin 7.1 now.

Update: It has now the ability to mark certain senders as trusted. Trusted profiles are not being analyzed, so their messages are always go through regardless of contents.

In the vendors conclusion, where I need to edit BxDolMailBox.php, the line that includes $aComposeSettings['notification'] = false --> if I change false into true, would it mean the email notification about message would be allowed/ticked (that is desirable in my case)?

 No. If you want the notification checkbox to be always enabled then you have to edit the files

templates/base/mail_box_compose_message.html

templates/base/mail_box_compose_replay_message.html

the line

<label><input type="checkbox" id="notify_mail"/>__notify__</label>

must be replaced with

<label><input type="checkbox" id="notify_mail" checked="checked"/>__notify__</label>

And after doing that don't forget to clean site's templates cache at admin panel. 

Thank you. I already have these edited. I was just thinking maybe when the messages are captured these settings were being re-setted by your mod...

By the way, I've noticed after a test message that got captured, that the sender's following messages are being captured even though they do not contain any of the phrases. Is this on purpose? Did the sender got into some suspicious category? :) If yes, it's not covering situation when one message from the sender gets captured like this but is released but admin still wants to keep an eye on this sender WITHOUT having to see every single message that this sender sends (the situation, when first captured message is innocent but some of the following messages still can carry spam or intolerable behaviour, is plausible). So if captured message marks sender somehow as untrustworthy in the mod, I'm forced to mark the sender Trusted to avoid reading every single message of his/her - which is not something I want to do, since few captured but ok messages do not mean the sender is ok after all.

It can also be that the mod malfunctioned. :) In this case I'm sorry I didn't save the screenshot, but the message with no pre-set phrase was captured, for the sender who's previous message was captured as well (this time with phrases spotted correctly).

So I just worry I'll have to mark sender Trusted to avoid seeing every single message from him or her, or to read everything they send and approve. Lol.

Thank you. I already have these edited. I was just thinking maybe when the messages are captured these settings were being re-setted by your mod...

The module saves and uses these settings as they were chosen by a sender.

By the way, I've noticed after a test message that got captured, that the sender's following messages are being captured even though they do not contain any of the phrases. Is this on purpose? Did the sender got into some suspicious category? :) If yes, it's not covering situation when one message from the sender gets captured like this but is released but admin still wants to keep an eye on this sender WITHOUT having to see every single message that this sender sends (the situation, when first captured message is innocent but some of the following messages still can carry spam or intolerable behaviour, is plausible). So if captured message marks sender somehow as untrustworthy in the mod, I'm forced to mark the sender Trusted to avoid reading every single message of his/her - which is not something I want to do, since few captured but ok messages do not mean the sender is ok after all.
It can also be that the mod malfunctioned. :) In this case I'm sorry I didn't save the screenshot, but the message with no pre-set phrase was captured, for the sender who's previous message was captured as well (this time with phrases spotted correctly).
So I just worry I'll have to mark sender Trusted to avoid seeing every single message from him or her, or to read everything they send and approve. Lol.

This is impossible. :) If the message was captured then this means only that it (or its subject) is containing one of the phrases to capture. Message can not be captured just because sender was sending something suspicious earlier, there is no such a functionality in the module. If you see some strange behavior then provide us please with insturctions regarding how we can reproduce it.

Unfortunately I have no screenshot to prove it but the message and the subject were all grey, with no word or phrase marked in red - in fact, I re-read the message (it was just one simple line so it was easy) word by word comparing it to the phrases. There was no match. Not even partial inside some word (I'm not sure if the capturing works also this way). That's why I thought there was maybe some further functionality...

If only I knew how to reproduce this. :) The only thing I remember I was doing between the first (correct) and second (incorrect) capture was adding phrases and perhaps clearing the cache because of unrelated other work on the site (not sure I did this in the time leading up to the second capture though).

The possible explanation is that at some point you removed the phrase(s) which triggered a message capture. In the backend it highlights the phrases using currently set up phrases list, but a message may be captured at a time when phrases list was different, that is why at the moment it can be totally grey if it was captured because of a phrase which is not present in the phrases list anymore.

Could be but I only remember editing bags online into bags and some other similar changes from two word phrases into one word ones (so the capture should work in both cases anyway, catching bags in this example). But I can't put my hand into the fire for this. :)

Either way, the mod works fine since yesterday. :)

So, here's the proof, though slightly differing from my previous weird capture. This time, the text area contains only one smiley, though, as you can see, it is not shown in the captured messages text. Still, there is NONE phrase to be marked (because there is nothing to be filtered by the preset phrases). Maybe the mod captured it because it had smiley code? But then, that's an error to correct...

 Without seeing your phrases list I can not nether confirm nor refute that. But most likely the problem is in your phrases list. Smiley in text is represented like something similar to

<img title="Cool" src="../3rdparty/tiny_mce/plugins/emotions/img/smiley-cool.gif" alt="Cool" border="0" />

So if your phrases list contains anything that matches any word in there - it'll be captured. But in the admin panel all HTML tags (including smiles) are being stripped out for security reasons.

Another case, second screenshot. This time it's a simple message, clearly no match for the phrases - though it may contain a smiley in there, since the smileys are not shown in the admin. However, you see the phrases and comparing them to the smiley code (you posted before) I see no match either (it doesn't match to www or http).

P.S.: I made my phrases public so I'd welcome an input from a public, too, as to what to add on top of those that are there and perhaps some more in Russian, if Russian speaking members have a look. :)

Edit: I took the attachment off.

As I said it could be similar to what I've posted but not exactly like that. For example smiley code can contain an absolute path to the image and not a relative (which is very likely), i.e. it could be something like

<img title="Cool" src="http://site.com/plugins/tinymce/3rdparty/tiny_mce/plugins/emotions/img/smiley-cool.gif" alt="Cool" border="0" />

I.e. that was (and above is also) just an example to show you that smiley can be the reason. If you would like to see the message's source then you can look for it via phpMyAdmin in sys_messages or aqb_pending_messages database tables.

So what's the suggestion? Delete www and http phrases? What to substitute instead of them, in order to catch links but NOT to trigger smileys? Because if I want to capture anything with the hyperlink, I'm going to capture smileys too, no? And it's not only smiles code, embeding comes to my mind, too. Can't it be edited that capture could ignore http that points to an own site or to youtube, for example?

 The module have no idea what those phrases are. I.e. it can't know that for example http:// - is a part of an URL. The module operates with text only, all phrases are just a bunch of symbols to search for, just like the message which is also a string of symbols and nothing more from the point of view of the module. If you wish some more complex analysis and filtering of the messages then that should be implemented separately as a custom modification. And such analysis of URLs must be quite complex, because for example the URL http://yoursite.com@microsoft.com looks like an URL to yoursite.com when in fact it leads to microsoft.com.

Ok, but what's YOUR suggestion? :) I could delete phrases for hyperlinks, but then half of the logic for your mod is gone - how else to check for scam messages with links (unless I insert into phrases every single brand name that there is)? I could take smiles code out of the tinymce but why should I?

It is up to you. The ScamNet is just a very simple text parser/analyzer/filter, it is not aware of any kind of URLs, smiles, embeds, etc.

My suggestion is: if you need a complex URLs analyzer/filter, which will be checking whether an URL is external or not then that should be implemented as a custom modification for a separate fee. Contact us via PM if interested regarding the price.

Thank you but I at least expected you suggest me some tweaking with the link for smiles, to change it into relative path. Or anything else, but with this I'm stuck to DIY, basically. Then I wonder why your mod says nothing about The ScamNet is just a very simple text parser/analyzer/filter and it says Say NO to spammers and rude fellows, instead. I tried to say no and ended up with a custom job for god knows how much $$$, lol. It's clear not that many would buy if they knew they had to type in hundreds of phrases to cover at least some scam or spam, or to delete smiles from the messages.

Can you at least advise me on how to take smiles out of the messages only, so that I can use your mod to stop scam/spam? Or would this kind of support be also considered a custom job? ;)

7.0.X and which of these templates apply to messages only? I remember inserting embed plugin there from Deano but never had any idea which template is which. :)

By the way, can be your mod made into simple messenger capture as well?

7.0.X and which of these templates apply to messages only? I remember inserting embed plugin there from Deano but never had any idea which template is which. :)
Unfortunately there is no a separate template for messages only. All of them are being reused in several places.
I can't say which of them is used by messages because I'm not at my work computer right now. But you can find out that yourself by trying them one by one (as far as I remember there shouldn't be more than 3-5 of them), to do that remove the smiles for the first one and watch the message compose page, if no changes, then restore the first one and repeat the operation with the second one, and so on.
I just recall that the plugin name in those templates is "emoticons" and not "smiles".

By the way, can be your mod made into simple messenger capture as well?Unfrotunately no, the ScamNet is applicable only for mailbox messages because of it's internal architecture.

Hello Anton, this modul is effective, but it would be even more if he was able to detect and report messages in multiple copies by copy / paste. In 99% of cases, it is also attempted scammers of all kinds.

UPDATE: Now the module also automatically catches duplicate messages from the same sender. F.ex. if a member send 2 or more exactly the same messages then the second one (and all that possibly will follow it) will be captured automatically.

To update it is necessary to reinstall the module.

Thanks to baloo for the idea .

Big thank you Anton, I tested it now top.

Warning, do not forget to copy your keyphrases and not to lose the trust senders list:

1. Delete the line " ALTER TABLE `Profiles` DROP COLUMN `aqb_scamnet_trusted`; " in uninstall.sql file (old version)
2. Uninstall the old version
3. Delete the line " ALTER TABLE `Profiles` ADD COLUMN `aqb_scamnet_trusted` TINYINT(1) DEFAULT 0;"  in install.sql (new version)
4. Install the new version.

For keyphrases and a simple copy / paste enough.

This is the right method Anton?

  Almost. There must be step 2.5:

2.5. Delete the line " ALTER TABLE `Profiles` DROP COLUMN `aqb_scamnet_trusted`; " in uninstall.sql file (new version)

I've just tried this, it's not working for 7.0.9.

I bought this with the intention of stopping duplicate messages.

I copied a newspaper article and sent the same message 6 times.  All messages got through.

I have updated the file that needed to be edited too.

Could you have a look into this? 

 While testing did you were sending the message to yourself? If you're sending the message to yourself then this feature isn't working because it makes no sense. So ensure that you were testing it by sending a message from one profile to another. If that is not the case then we need an access to your site (FTP and admin panel) to check out the problem.

Already sent in PM.

The messages that were sent, I used three different profiles.  Test profiles.  Just to see.

Thought of an idea to add to this module.

Some of my members haven't been reading any admin announcements I've been making.

Instead, if I could have a message already prepopulated in the onsite message screen, then they'd see what they can or can't do.

I think of it like a search box that states the word 'search' and when you click in the box, the 'search' word disappears.

If something like that could be added, then I'm sure this would make an excellent enhancement.

 You can achieve that via a custom modification. Edit the file template/base/mail_box_compose_message.html, find the line

<textarea id="compose_message" class="story_edit_area"></textarea>

and put your initial message there as

<textarea id="compose_message" class="story_edit_area">you message here</textarea>

The similar modification should be applied to the template/base/mail_box_replay_message.html.