Possible bot using the Report Abuse function

Technical Details

Forum version : #phpBB2
Position : Founder
Concerned browser(s) : Mozilla Firefox
Screenshot of problem : https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/379706489528385557/807166583554048010/unknown.png
Who the problem concerns : Yourself
Forum link : https://numoori.swedishforum.net/

Description of problem

Hi!
I'm one of the admins on numoori.swedishforum.net (Swedish branch of forumotion) and we've just gotten a notice about a reported abuse on our forum. We've had some problems with bots lately misusing the contact forms and such, so we suspect this one's from a bot as well.

The report was made on a category page, so not a part of the forum where users can post anything, and claims that there's pornographic content, which there isn't.

● Is it possible to remove the reported abuse somehow?
We've moved it from "active abuses" to "done abuses", but it's still a bit frustrating to have a false report on the page. I have access to the founder account, but can't find any options other than just moving the report to "done abuses".

● Do reports like this affect the forum in any way?
As in, if we were to get more false reports like this one, would that result in any problems for the site? The site's been up and running for 10 years now, and we hope this won't create any problems for us or our users.

● Is there any way to either disable the report abuse function, or make it harder for bots to use it?
We've noticed that the "I'm not a robot" captcha doesn't always catch the bots, so if there's a way to make it harder to misuse the report function, we'd very much appreciate the help.

Thanks for your time!

Dear @Kreftropod

I'll try to reply to your questions one by one

Kreftropod wrote:● Is it possible to remove the reported abuse somehow?
We've moved it from "active abuses" to "done abuses", but it's still a bit frustrating to have a false report on the page. I have access to the founder account, but can't find any options other than just moving the report to "done abuses".

Sadly it is not possible, the history of abuses stays there - as you did the only thing that can be done is moving towards the Done abuses

Kreftropod wrote:● Do reports like this affect the forum in any way?
As in, if we were to get more false reports like this one, would that result in any problems for the site? The site's been up and running for 10 years now, and we hope this won't create any problems for us or our users.

No, the abuse is only directed to the administrator and it's just a sort of "private contact form" - for the rest it doesn't affect the forum or anything and the forumotion litigation team doesn't deal with it.

If you receive a litigation on the other hand, in that case it's managed by Forumotion. See the difference:

Kreftropod wrote:● Is there any way to either disable the report abuse function, or make it harder for bots to use it?
We've noticed that the "I'm not a robot" captcha doesn't always catch the bots, so if there's a way to make it harder to misuse the report function, we'd very much appreciate the help.

Have you experienced any report received by bots? Because I have never encountered them in the last 10 years - but about this, you should wait for an official staff reply

Have a nice day

A bot can not make a report as far as I know. I would say this is a member or a person looking at your forum.

Sadly you can't remove the link on your forum to stop this.

I would not worry about it the report is only for Admins/ founders.

Thank you for your replies!

Glad to hear that it won’t affect the site. It’s the thing I was most worried about so that’s good to know. We’ll leave the report marked as "done" then

We assumed it might be a bot (or at least more spam) since we’ve had spam sent through the "Contact the forum" form previously (which we’ve since disabled), as well as through our cbox chat and PMs from the odd spam accounts.

Too bad we can’t see who sent the report or give them a reply if they were looking to ask questions. I’m a little confused as to why anyone would choose to use the "report abuse" function if they were trying to get in contact with the forum, since we have the open cbox chat available that anyone – guests included – can use, but each to their own, I guess. Just glad to know that false reports won't create any problems if we get more.

Thanks again for your quick replies! I’ll go ahead and say this is solved~

Have a great weekend <3