----------------------------------- Dan Fri Feb 12, 2010 2:29 am Small antispam update ----------------------------------- I have made a small update to the code for the registration page and posting page to help stop spam bots. If you get any errors saying something about you being a bot, let me know via dan@compsci.ca. ----------------------------------- mother teresa Fri Feb 12, 2010 10:40 am RE:Small antispam update ----------------------------------- you got it ----------------------------------- SNIPERDUDE Fri Feb 12, 2010 11:04 am RE:Small antispam update ----------------------------------- Will do. ----------------------------------- rdrake Fri Feb 12, 2010 12:29 pm Re: Small antispam update ----------------------------------- I'm not convinced it worked. I just had to delete a dozen or so spam posts in OT. ----------------------------------- Dan Fri Feb 12, 2010 1:07 pm Re: Small antispam update ----------------------------------- I'm not convinced it worked. I just had to delete a dozen or so spam posts in OT. I'm not convinced there bots now, that or the bots acuataly navigate threw each page like a person would and can do captchas. Edit: For example the last spammer was on the site for over 16 minuets and had 79 page hits to make there spam posts. ----------------------------------- SNIPERDUDE Fri Feb 12, 2010 7:31 pm RE:Small antispam update ----------------------------------- I don't imagine there's too much we can do about human spammers. ----------------------------------- Dan Sun Feb 28, 2010 2:42 pm RE:Small antispam update ----------------------------------- I have just added a new feature to the report function which will hide a topic and flag it for review if enough users report it. Obviously abuse of this new feature will lead to your acount being banned, so don't report topics just to remove a post you disagree with. Edit: All posted links will also have rel="nofollow" added to them to discourage PR related spam. ----------------------------------- Insectoid Sun Feb 28, 2010 6:47 pm RE:Small antispam update ----------------------------------- What's that do? PR related spam? ----------------------------------- rdrake Sun Feb 28, 2010 7:22 pm Re: RE:Small antispam update ----------------------------------- What's that do? PR related spam?That's the idea. Even if they still do it it won't benefit them in any way. ----------------------------------- Insectoid Sun Feb 28, 2010 8:01 pm RE:Small antispam update ----------------------------------- I was asking what rel="nofollow" does and what PR related spam is. ----------------------------------- rdrake Sun Feb 28, 2010 8:31 pm RE:Small antispam update ----------------------------------- It stops spiders from following those links. This reduces the grow in page rank of the links posted by spammers. ----------------------------------- BigBear Tue Apr 06, 2010 6:00 pm RE:Small antispam update ----------------------------------- How do you get past Capatcha? I don't want a script or program I just want to know the theory behind it. Does it screen shot the screen and try to solve the word? ----------------------------------- ProgrammingFun Tue Apr 06, 2010 6:48 pm RE:Small antispam update ----------------------------------- You could also ban sites such as 10minutemail.com or mail.com giving artificial emails to register bots and require real email addresses instead. If someone turns out to be a bot or spammer, you could then ban that email from registering new accounts (or ban multiple accounts on 1 email in the first place). Just thinking....I don't know if you have already implemented this tho. ----------------------------------- Tony Tue Apr 06, 2010 6:50 pm Re: RE:Small antispam update ----------------------------------- Does it screen shot the screen and try to solve the word? Send the captcha elsewhere. There are a lot of people willing to solve captchas all day long for _very cheap_ ----------------------------------- Tony Tue Apr 06, 2010 6:53 pm Re: RE:Small antispam update ----------------------------------- or ban multiple accounts on 1 email in the first place That is typically the case. A lot of places use email as the primary user id, so those are forced to be unique. But getting a new email address is virtually free and trivially automated. ----------------------------------- USEC_OFFICER Tue Apr 06, 2010 7:50 pm RE:Small antispam update ----------------------------------- Ban IP adresses? (As a last resort) ----------------------------------- Insectoid Tue Apr 06, 2010 7:55 pm RE:Small antispam update ----------------------------------- it's not hard to get a new IP. ----------------------------------- Tony Wed Apr 07, 2010 3:13 am Re: RE:Small antispam update ----------------------------------- Ban IP adresses? So what would you do if some machine behind its network's router is compromised and is sending out spam? An IP could include a school's class, all of the school, or in some cases a whole school board behind the same public address. ----------------------------------- ProgrammingFun Thu Apr 08, 2010 10:21 am Re: RE:Small antispam update ----------------------------------- Ban IP adresses? So what would you do if some machine behind its network's router is compromised and is sending out spam? An IP could include a school's class, all of the school, or in some cases a whole school board behind the same public address. Yes, but you could ban that certain IP from CREATING accounts. If someone at school wants an account, they can easily make one at home. For example, Wikipedia has banned TDSB schools from editing any articles or creating accounts (although signed-in accounts on school computers can still make edits). ----------------------------------- Dan Thu Apr 08, 2010 11:27 am RE:Small antispam update ----------------------------------- Most spammers only use an IP once and then never again. Also most of the time this is an IP of an infected computer which means it's a home ISP. Blocking all of bell, shaw, cogoeco, etc is not an option. When it is clear that the spammer is coming form a data center and not a home or school based ISP we do block the range of that data center but it does lite to help since they rarely come back any way. The effect of spam on this site is so small, it hardly seems worth it to block school users from crating account because they possibly become infected, by that logic we might as well just turn off user registration.