Forum postings generated spam

Forum postings generated spam

by Suzanne Jensen -
Number of replies: 5

Has anyone heard of this one?  My students were working on a forum, and the email option was open.  There were only 20 students, and they only generated 275 entries in 30 minutes, but for some reason my server was flooded with a burst of more than 3000 mailings.  They shut down my website, and notified me. After some negotiation, they re-instated the website, but when they did they got numerous more bursts of 900+ mails at a time (even though I had turned off the email option as soon as I could log in again), so they have shut down my web email service.  Anyone have a clue what could have caused this? (And of course, how to fix it?)

With thanks,

Suzanne Jensen

Average of ratings: -
In reply to Suzanne Jensen

Re: Forum postings generated spam

by Michael Penney -

Hi Suzanne, if your students generated 275 entries (they were busysmile), each entry is sent to all 20 students, then your mailserver would send 275x20 = 5500 total email messages.

But the messages that were set to be sent earlier, and did not get sent because your hosting service turned off the mail function - sounds like your host didn't clear the mailserver queue -so the messages that didn't get sent earlier would still queued up to send. Your hosting service should be able to clear the mail queue out, though (wouldn't make much sense to turn off your mailserver without clearing the list of queued messages though -did they say why they didn't do this?).

In reply to Michael Penney

Re: Forum postings generated spam

by Suzanne Jensen -

OHHHH! Thanks!  I just didn't follow the math all the way through. I will contact my server with your comments, and I hope this will end the saga.  I need to be able to mail my little pets!

P.S. Those 275 messages were pretty short, you'd better believe.  They are EFL students...

In reply to Suzanne Jensen

Re: Forum postings generated spam

by Michael Penney -
Glad to help - one more thing - you may want to have your students switch their Email digest type (in Edit profile) to daily - that way they'll get one email/day with all the forum postings, rather than 275. That cuts the number of messages way down while still providing a way for the students to get forum posts emailed to them. 
Average of ratings: Useful (1)
In reply to Michael Penney

Re: Forum postings generated spam

by Jeffrey Thomas -
I would like to make that setting (email digest=daily) be the default for my site.   How can we make it the default for all logins, at least upon account-creation?   and how might I force a one-time setting of all existing users, this summer vacation?
In reply to Jeffrey Thomas

Re: Forum postings generated spam

by Ken Wilson -

Jeffrey

The default email digest setting is controlled by the maildigest field in the mdl_user table and by two values in admin/uploaduser_form.php and user/editlib.php. Three values are possible:

0 = No digest
1 = Complete digest
2 = Digest with just subjects

To change the default to complete digests try this:

1. Change the default value in the mdl_user table with this MySQL command to set the default for all newly created users:

ALTER TABLE `mdl_user` CHANGE `maildigest` `maildigest` TINYINT( 1 ) UNSIGNED NOT NULL DEFAULT '1'

2. Edit the file moodle/admin/uploaduser_form.php and look for line 170.

        $choices = array(0 => get_string('emaildigestoff'), 1 => get_string('emaildigestcomplete'), 2 => get_string('emaildigestsubjects'));
        $mform->addElement('select', 'maildigest', get_string('emaildigest'), $choices);
        $mform->setDefault('maildigest', 1); //Changed from 0 to 1
        $mform->setAdvanced('maildigest');

 3. Edit the file moodle/user/editlib.php and look for line 124.

    $choices = array();
    $choices['0'] = get_string('emaildigestoff');
    $choices['1'] = get_string('emaildigestcomplete');
    $choices['2'] = get_string('emaildigestsubjects');
    $mform->addElement('select', 'maildigest', get_string('emaildigest'), $choices);
    $mform->setDefault('maildigest', 1); //Changed from 0 to 1
    $mform->setAdvanced('maildigest');

 As always, backup your files before editing them and keep a record of the changes made in a central document somewhere so that you can refer to it when doing upgrades.

Hope this helps!

Ken