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Bots and Spam

Posted on: Mon, 04/27/2009 - 21:33
Bots and Spam

You may note that we are installing spam/bot filters.

It's annoying to track them down and remove them by hand. If these don't solve it, I'm going to write a custom bit of code that I am absolutely certain will solve it. (And no, it's not "rm -rf /")


Comments

Posted on: Mon, 04/27/2009 - 21:40 #1
No free lunch

And the arms race shall continue, inevitably.

Presently, I'm not allowing anyone a free pass to skip the checks. We can turn those on for some people if we want to, but for a while we will have all of us try to use them. (Yes, I mean *all* -- admins, authors, readers.) I want to be sure there aren't any glitches lurking, as I've already had to edit the code behind two of the challenge-response systems.

In the future, I plan to turn off the challenge-response per user once they have successfully passed the challenge in a certain metric. Perhaps per forum topic or response on a story, or a certain number of times, or . . .

Shrug.

Yell if you find a problem.

Posted on: Tue, 04/28/2009 - 02:45 #2
If you need help making a

If you need help making a filter, I can be of some assistance. I managed to keep spam bots from posting on my website's forum.

A fish without a bicycle cannot contemplate his navel.

Posted on: Wed, 04/29/2009 - 02:03 #3
Bots and Spam

I thought that was some store Edgar and Remus opened in Diagon Alley.

Oh! If I get the CAPTCHA question right does that mean I might pass a Turing test? =)

Posted on: Wed, 04/29/2009 - 05:20 #4
Chatmandu wrote: If I get
Chatmandu wrote:

If I get the CAPTCHA question right does that mean I might pass a Turing test?

Did I share with you my experience in testing the "help desk" with that? And that they failed? Really, if you're going to outsource, outsource to something other than a dumb AI program.

Posted on: Sat, 05/02/2009 - 21:45 #5
Simplification

The basic test seems to have been sufficient to stop the automated spam attacks. For now, I've turned it off on the "submit comment" and reply-to-x features. The only time the challenge-response is expected is to create a new forum, change your password, or create a new account.

Either the lack of complaints meant people had a calculator handy, or couldn't prove they were human enough to post a complaint. I prefer to think it was the former.