If you are having trouble with any of pbots features, please have a read through the help-file.  This file is also available 
from within pbot. 

We have included an index at the beginning of this file to help you quickly find what you need.

Should you need anymore help, you can contact the Pbot help centre directly from within the help dialog. Or type /pbhelp in any window. 




Index of contents:

- Pbot Overview
- Getting to know pbot
- Protections
- Advanced spam shield
- Further protections
- Badwords list
- Botnet protections: - The serious threat to IRC
- Scanning incoming connections
- DDOS attacks
- Blacklist
- Cmd on connect



Pbot Overview:

Pbot is a little guy who sits in your IRC channel, and will protect the channel for you. It has a full GUI and everything seems to be able to be configured. It is a socket bot that will open one unobtrusive window and silently does its work letting you carry on with other things. You are assured a irreplaceable security bot that complements services ensuring constant protection on any channel its opped on.

Getting to know pbot:

Pbot is built with the approach that allows users to have fun and chat on a channel. Pbot is not made to be trigger happy and will react only when a recognized spammer or attack is taking place on a channel. If this means minor floods will be ignored then so be it. Special care has been taken to reduce false positives as much as possible. Pbot is far from overly strict. But should an attack take place or a continuous abuser is using i.e colors and you have kick colors checked depending on your settings you will find pbot dealing with these threats qot will part the deleted channel.

Protections:

Pbots flood protection will kick all flooders (protections do not apply to ops) out of a channel. If the flood is repeated several times the user will be kick banned from the channel. pbots spam protection is second to none and will prove itself over and over again by catching spammers. It parses each line of text with complex code to capture spam patterns and act accordingly. For example excessive characters (like aaaaaaaaaa....) in a line of text or the same word repeated many times in a line of text will trigger the spam protection.

Advanced spam shield:

The advanced spam shield will monitor spam patterns on every event not just text. For example if a user parts a channel with an excessive part message it will result with an instant ban on his host or if a user joins a channel with excessive text or matches a spam pattern the user will also instantly be removed from the channel. This feature is especially useful on large channels where it is paramount to keep the channel free of spammers, trolls and random drones.

Pbot is also able to catch random spammers. i.e if random text like "jdlishfkjsdhgjsghfdkgjskghd fulkgjdhfh hfkdsjhgkhdkghslkskdlghds" is typed in a channel, pbot will monitor the user and remove the user if necessary. 

Further protections:

The partjoin protection will prevent users flooding a channel by parting and joining repeatedly, this option should be checked as it will pick up other spammers (excessive quits etc.) and is imperative for efficient protection. The advertising protection will kick users if a URL is typed in a channel, complex parsing is used to ensure that only if a true URL is typed in the channel it would trigger and not if someone just typed "www|ftp" etc. Please note that by design pbot will not kick channel operators.

Badwords:

The badwords option when selected will kick users when a badword is used. It is intelligent and will trigger even when people try and fool the bot. For example if "badword" is added to the list pbot will kick if a user says "badword" or "bad_word" or even "bad_w_o54rd". Please take care when adding really short badwords as this could lead to innocents being kicked.

Botnet protections: - The serious threats to IRC.

The flood bot protections if checked will look out for spam bots which are one of the biggest threats on irc. If Pbot detects excessive quit, nick changes or joins it will lock the channel with a mode that will allow other users to carry on chatting normally whilst barring the possible flood bots. Pbot will attempt to keep the disturbance to a minimum. After two minutes pbot will reset the protective modes to normal. Pbot will set standard channel protective modes allowing other registered users to chat undisturbed whilst notifying opers of the disturbance

Scanning incoming connections:

If selected Pbot will scan incoming ip addresses against a global RBL blacklist. One can set sensitivity with 0 being the highest. It is recommended to set it between 0 and 5 as really any ip matched on the list is bound to be a threat to your server. You can also select a channel where incoming client connections are reported to with threat status after pb has checked on them. Having this feature enabled will guarantee your server a digital wall of protection against inbound botnets and spammers.

DDOS attacks. 

The ddos protection will monitor the lag between the bot and the client to determine if a server is under attack. It has been tested many times by simulating attacks on a server in an attempt to perfect the detection. It will respond by sending a message to the report channel and a server "helpop" to notify irc operators of its findings. Please note that it is not 100% and false positives could happen if the server or client is just laggy. To ensure less false positives please make sure Pbot is running on a good lag free connection.

Blacklist:

The blacklist will kickban users on joining a channel if they match any address placed in its list. It can be enabled and disabled at a click of a button. please make sure a users address is added in *!*@ format otherwise it may not work as intended. To get the exact format type /bl [nick] this will send the correct format to your clipboard if the user ison a channel.

Cmd on connect:

Pbot will execute any command you specify on connecting to a server. This could be used for example to identify to nickserv. Please note all commands have to be in irc RAW format to work. A good example is "privmsg nickserv identify secret_oper pbot secret" will msg nickserv identify with password secret and oper you. Numerous commands can be seperated with "_". Please also note that any commands typed in the bot window will be sent direct to the server, e.g join #channel will join the pbot to #channel.

