IMPORTANT !!

This instance of the bot is currently not being maintained. The project is not abandoned, but the bot is currently being rewritten, and this stable version kinda sucks right now. Proceed with caution and keep an eye on the 2024 rewrite branch. I will release an announcement when its ready.

Spam Police

A Matrix bot to monitor and respond to investment scam spamming across the Matrix platform, for example in rooms with a permanently offline admin.

Warning

This bot does not support encrypted rooms yet. This has been implemented in the sdk and likely could be added to the bot easy enough, however I don't currently have the proper access to the bot account required to set this up due to not being able to currently set up my desktop workstation.

Discussion

• Matrix Space: #spam-police:matrix.org
• Support Room: #anti-scam-support:matrix.org
• Update and Announcement Room: #spam-police-rss:matrix.org
• General Moderation Automation Ideas Room: #mod-ideas:matrix.org

Inviting the bot

You can use my instance: @anti-spam:matrix.org, or self-host your own!

To invite it, you can run the command below in #spam-police-bot-cmds:matrix.org.

+join [Alias/ID to room]

By using my instance you agree to everything applicable within https://pain.agency/legal/

Note

If you have problems inviting the bot, make sure the bot can join it. if the room is invite only, invite the bot account to the room first. If you still have problems, join our support room.

Note

My instance logs the scams it finds to #jjj-tg-scams:matrix.org

Commands/Usage

Command prefix:

All commands below require the prefix before the command unless specified. The bot prefix can be customized on a per-room basis, in which the bot displayname will be set to [prefix] | Spam Police, with a default prefix of +.

Example usage: +uptime to run the uptime command with the default prefix of +

Basic commands

• @anti-scam:matrix.org (no prefix) - pinging the bot will bring up a short introduction as well as a link back here, no need to bookmark this page!
• uptime - displays the current bot uptime, doubles as a ping command

Essential Usage Commands

• join [room ID/alias/matrix.to] - works only in #spam-police-bot-cmds:matrix.org. This command makes the bot join the referenced room. If the room is invite only (unsure why you'd use this bot in an invite only room) you'll need to invite the bot's account to the room and then run this command
• mute - toggles mute mode on and off. In mute mode the bot will only react to detected scam messages, and will not display the warning message.

Moderation Related Commands

• rules - generates a json file of all rules that apply to the room, sorted by banlist. Adding a way to filter for a specific user is planned but not currently a thing

Note the following commands require ban permission unless otherwise noted because that is the powerlevel required to perform these same actions manually (or with a selfbot)

• followbanlist [add/remove] [room ID/alias/matrix.to] - subscribes or unsubscribes the room to a mjolner banlist, and performs mass moderation actions as mjolner would.
• banlist [add/remove] [here / room ID/alias/matrix.to] [target user mxid] <reason> - writes or removes a mjolner ban recomendation policy to a "banlist" room with a given reason
  • requires ban permission or permission to write m.rule.policy.user state events as that is the permission required to perform the same actions by hand or selfbot.

Administration Commands for Selfhosters

• restart - runs Process.exit(), only restarts if you have it set to run upon exit such as through systemd (this is how I do it on the production system)
• leave <room ID/alias/matrix.to> - makes the bot leave the specified room, if no room is specified it leaves the current room. Also adds the room to a blacklist to prevent it from being re-added to the room (also gets added if a room mod kicks the bot).
• unblacklist [room ID/alias/matrix.to] - remove rooms from the administrator blacklist.

Self-hosting

Requirements

• NodeJS
  • Install from package manager
  • NodeJS Installer
• NPM
  • Installation Documentation
• git (optional)
  • Installing Git

Note

The bot is very light during run time and barely uses any resources, however it sees a large resource spike at startup due to initial sync. This can cause it to crash on lower powered systems (like the hetzner cpx11 vps) if you have an old sync token. What I do to fix this is I run the bot on a higher powered system like my dev machine (tbh anything with 4+ gb of real ram should work, 8+gb ram and quad core should be enough for the spike to be unnoticable), and then copy that sync token in bot.json into the bot.json on my vps. This issue is not faced on the Hetzner cpx21, which I now run. Please let me know or contribute if you know how to make the initial sync less resource intense.

Instructions

1. Download the latest stable version located in the branches
   • Stable branches are formatted as stable-vX.X.X-(version-X,-update-x,-patch-X)
   • Downloading as a ZIP and extracting it is recommended
     • Using git: git clone -b <branch> --single-branch https://github.com/archeite/spam-police.git

Note

For a development version, you download from the master branch instead of the stable branch. The git command is shown below

$ git clone -b master --single-branch https://github.com/archeite/spam-police.git

2. Go into the folder you cloned (cd spam-police), create a directory named db (mkdir -p db), and enter it (cd db)

cd spam-police && mkdir -p db && cd db

3. Copy the example configuration file from examples/login.yaml to db (cp ../examples/login.yaml ./)

4. Edit the configuration file to your liking

5. Go back to the root directory (cd ..) and create bot.json (touch bot.json)

Note

You don't need to put anything in bot.json, leave it empty

This appears to be how the bot SDK saves the sync token and stuff.

6. To install dependencies, run npm install

7. Start the bot with node index.js or node .