By Dabitch on

Hey Drupal-peeps

I 'm having problems with spammers recently, they sign up and fill their user-page with viagra links, then take off in order to never be seen again. Since they do not attempt to comment I don't spot them that way, and for some reason bad-behaviour hasn't prevented them from signing up.

They do however, sign up with a bouncing email that returns to my inbox, so I see them and delete them. So I was curious, isn't there a module that does this automagically already? There should be!

I'm using advanced user so that I can find users that never logged in and such, by the way. Perhaps this would be a good addition to that if it doesn't already exist. This probably involves setting drupal up to receive the "returned mail" messages usually reserved for postmaster or root but I think quite a few drupal users are already on their own machines so it's possible....

Sorry rambling, yeah my question was about deleting sapmmer users. Are there things out there that might flag them? I have a huge disadvantage with the advanced user module which allows me to delete all users that haven't logged in for X amount of time, I do have some very long-term and very sporadic users who have been around for years and I wouldn't want to cull them by using that feature.

Comments

Dabitch’s picture

Dabitch commented

... yeah or one could automagically delete users who don't log in 24 hours after registering because it's safe to assume that they are dead users for whatever reason. No need to involve bouncing emails. Duh. ;)

Anonymous’s picture

Anonymous (not verified) commented

Maybe Troll can help you?
Or the spam module?

Dabitch’s picture

Dabitch commented

Thanks, both of these seems useful so I'm using them now.

jo1ene’s picture

jo1ene commented

http://drupal.org/project/user_maintenance

Update?

Spam module doesn't do anything with users, just removed content that meets certian criteria.
I am not familiar with troll module.

Advanced Web Design

Dabitch’s picture

Dabitch commented

Hey

Yeah spam doesn't do anything with users but I tried it just for fun. Troll is a good way to block users that are abusive.

I have advanced management as well, it was the first one I installed. My teeny probem is that I've migrated from phpnuke to drupal, so there is a plethora of old users still seen as "never logged in". Some of these people are the types who log in once a year, so I'm not likely to get a logged in flag from them anytime soon, and they have a history of posting good comments/stories/etc so I really don't want to cull these users with the advanced user management and have their entire history revert to "anonymous".

I'll just fix it by hand, troll provides a very good way to browse through users (displaying emails) so that helps a lot, and I'll just weed out the obvious spammers.

Would be kinda neat if there was a module that deleted users who don't log in X hours after the accounts is created. I'm sure advanced management can be used for that when one doesn't - like me - have a lot of old members one wants to keep (because their history) that have never logged in. (My phpnuke site was over six years old)

nancydru’s picture

nancydru
she/her/hers
Primary language English
Location Boston
commented

Make your own module and contribute it. I suspect it would be fairly popular. I could use it for a site I'm getting started on now.

Nancy W.
Drupal Cookbook (for New Drupallers)
Adding Hidden Design or How To notes in your database

NancyDru

markfoodyburton’s picture

markfoodyburton commented

I've just had a load of bounces to deal with, so I wrote a very short perl script.... it simply marks users as "blocked" - you can choose to delete them or whatever...

To use this script, I set up a mail folder with all the bounces in it.... (you could get your client to put them there, or set something up on your server) - then I ran this script on all the bounced mail - I was using Maildir format, so it worked simply enough for that. Not sure if BounceParse will work so nicely on unix mail folders - left to the interested reader.

I could automate this process - a little cron job, maybe once a day/week/whatever, however frequently I think I'm going to have new bounces.
Or, the interested reader might want to make this a delivery agent for postfix - or similar. All sorts of things are possible, but I'm not sure it has so much to do with drupal as to do with the specific nature of the server set up and your mail set up... 

$dsn = "DBI:$dbtype:$dbase:$dbhost";
$dbh = DBI->connect($dsn, $dbuser, $dbauth) or die;

use Mail::DeliveryStatus::BounceParser;
undef $/;
while (<>) {
  my $bounce = Mail::DeliveryStatus::BounceParser->new( $_) or die "couldn't parse";
  if ($bounce->is_bounce()) {
    my       @addresses = $bounce->addresses;       # email address strings
    for $a (@addresses) {
      chop($a);
      print ($dbh->quote($a)."\n");
      $dbh->do("update users set status=0 where mail=".$dbh->quote($a).";");
    }
  }
}
aufumy’s picture

aufumy commented

http://drupal.org/project/advuser has the same functionality

sangamreddi’s picture

sangamreddi commented

We've developed a bounce mail and track mail module longback for our own. Its hard coded to our requirements, i am taking up this weekend to convert it to a generic module and contribute.

Sunny                      
www.gleez.com | www.sandeepone.com

vm’s picture

vm commented

TY, sangamreddi it will be a welcome additon to the contributed modules.

sangamreddi’s picture

sangamreddi commented

Thanks..
As promised this is my alpha version .. http://drupal.org/node/178350

Sunny                      
www.gleez.com | www.sandeepone.com

Rhino’s picture

Rhino commented

Great!!

wwwoliondorcom’s picture

wwwoliondorcom commented

Hello,

Can you tell me how to know when emails sent by my websites bounce back ?

Where should i look to find the list of messages sent that never reach their destination when users have changed their email address or for any other reason ?

Thanks for help.

wwwoliondorcom’s picture

wwwoliondorcom commented

Any help ?

Thank you.

aufumy’s picture

aufumy commented

The returned email should be bounced back to the email address used by the website to send out the emails, specified on the site admin page.

A different email address can be specified for returns to be delivered to
Return-Path: <bounces@example.com>

One may need to ask sendmail not to override the bounce email with '-f your@site.com'
http://drupal.org/node/36102

wwwoliondorcom’s picture

wwwoliondorcom commented

Thank you.

I still don't understand why I never get bouncing back emails.

I have 15000 users and they get monthly reminders if they don't connect, it's impossible that all these emails are reaching their destination.

I am checking email written in site information (webmaster@website.com) but no bouncing back emails there.

Any more information welcome, thank you again.