Fighting spammers

Nicky726 · 2010-09-18 10:04:38

Uh, now whats this... A captcha at every forums login? And not working in rekonq by the way. Could you possibly find out a less intruding method? Or at least make it not browser discriminating?

Pierre · 2010-09-18 10:08:50

I am working on this. The captcha will be a lot harder to solve than the current one. If it does not work in rekonq its most likely a bug in that browser. It's just a normal input form.

Nicky726 · 2010-09-18 10:19:36

OK, isn't an input form used for username too? Strange didn't noticed troubles filling in various other captchas in rekonq.

stefanwilkens · 2010-09-18 11:07:14

bots don't do math do they?

how about a simple x {+,-} x = ?

Pierre · 2010-09-18 11:28:59

Bots are not the problem but human spammers. And they are able to solve all kinds of captchas.

kgas · 2010-09-18 11:37:12

capcha will not be helpful for physically challenged. Another alternative will be using pub/private key combinations for the members but all such line of thinking will introduce its own complexity.

Xyne · 2010-09-18 11:37:35

Pierre wrote:

Bots are not the problem but human spammers. And they are able to solve all kinds of captchas.

If only there were a way to prevent humans from registering...

stefanwilkens · 2010-09-18 11:52:23

Pierre wrote:

Bots are not the problem but human spammers. And they are able to solve all kinds of captchas.

ah, sorry for misunderstanding your original intent perhaps an expansion of the wiki team is in order... specifically assigned to keep key topics clean and up to date?

spamming open source wikis... ugh.

karol · 2010-09-18 13:19:21

Xyne wrote:

Pierre wrote:
Bots are not the problem but human spammers. And they are able to solve all kinds of captchas.
If only there were a way to prevent humans from registering...

A small amount of $$$ held in escrow (of whatever it's called) so you get it back after - say - a month or ten posts / edits, whichever comes last.
Is the post of Minister of Infrastructure of Arch still vacant? Maybe I should apply ;P

chris-kun · 2010-09-18 14:49:43

I think this was suggested in a different thread.. but I really like the idea of having some package in the AUR generate a key or whatnot.

Pierre · 2010-09-18 15:55:01

So, here is an update. I have implemented some new functions for the Wiki and forums:
* If you want to register or post as guest you have to answer a question correctly.
* For now you only have to answer this question once a day.

anonymous_user · 2010-09-18 16:15:03

Is that effective at this moment?

If so, how do you post as a guest?

karol · 2010-09-18 16:15:53

Pierre wrote:

So, here is an update. I have implemented some new functions for the Wiki and forums:
* If you want to register or post as guest you have to answer a question correctly.
* For now you only have to answer this question once a day.

Let's hope it will work :-)

How other people / forums are dealing with similar issues?

Pierre · 2010-09-18 16:37:33

@anonymous_user: atm guest posting is disabled by the forum moderators.

@karol: Other forums have similar problems. Other solutions are Blacklisting or moderate registrations. But there is not that much you can do about human spammers. (ok, we could block all ips from indiea, usa etc.)

crouse · 2010-09-19 04:33:42

If you look at some of my websites, you'll see how I protected the sites from bots/automated signups.

If you use .htaccess to protect the https://bbs.archlinux.org/register.php page, you will stop the bot signups ... no php captcha is good enough to prevent bots from bypassing the captcha, they just write smarter bots Once in a blue moon we have a manual registration...just to spam, to prevent that is almost an impossibility. Even if they bypass my .htaccess protection manually, automating the bots to bypass the .htaccess protection on a login, isn't nearly as easy (possible, but not worth their trouble to figure out how). Login requires not only captcha, but also the .htaccess protection ....

The forums can be cleaned fairly easily, obviously the wiki gets to be a bigger pita though when they mess it up. Perhaps making registration for the wiki available only for forum members that have at least 50 posts and 30 days of membership(or meet some other criteria). Manually authorizing users for the wiki might be prudent, as cleaning up might be more painful. Personally having new members messing with the wiki has caused problems in the past, and delaying new peoples right to modify the wiki might not be a bad thing, as it takes time to learn Arch and it's philosophy.

Ease for members = More Spammers
Hard for members = Less Spammers

I opted for Hard for members/Less Spammers.... as I was simply tired of dealing with them. That and it sort of defeated my "family friendly" atmosphere if there were pron links randomly posting all over the forum.... That and most members hated the spam/spammers as much as I did and were supportive of the efforts to end it.
Anyway, just another thing you might look into, thought it might be of help.

Pierre · 2010-09-19 08:26:14

If I disable register.php nobody will be able to register; so I don't see the point. Its also not about bots here but humans (they might use some special tools though).

flamelab · 2010-09-19 14:48:59

Hmm, maybe a question of a Linux terminal output ? He (the spammer) should have a linux system to use. The question would be a copy/paste thing for a linux user, nothing more.

karol · 2010-09-19 14:52:35

flamelab wrote:

Hmm, maybe a question of a Linux terminal output ? He (the spammer) should have a linux system to use. The question would be a copy/paste thing for a linux user, nothing more.

Imagine your enemy is as smart as you are. How would you stop yourself from spamming a forum / wiki?

flamelab · 2010-09-19 14:56:50

karol wrote:

flamelab wrote:
Hmm, maybe a question of a Linux terminal output ? He (the spammer) should have a linux system to use. The question would be a copy/paste thing for a linux user, nothing more.
Imagine your enemy is as smart as you are. How would you stop yourself from spamming a forum / wiki?

I would make him be bored or almost incapable of doing it. Bored: too many questions. Incapable: I don't think that many spammers have... linux systems. A bash output (for example "what's the output of "echo bla bla bla" would eliminate a lot of them.

Last edited by flamelab (2010-09-19 14:57:15)

schen · 2010-09-19 15:11:05

The windows cmd has echo too, you know. And with Mac OS X, they already have bash, because it's UNIX based. Something that an arch linux user would know... like tacos!

Back on topic, I think any linux user who wants to use arch should be able to tell a simple shell script, like telling the time or something.

Last edited by schen (2010-09-19 15:12:42)

flamelab · 2010-09-19 15:11:38

I don't only mean echo, that was an example.

schen · 2010-09-19 15:13:11

flamelab wrote:

I don't only mean echo, that was an example.

Oh, then that's a good idea.

Pierre · 2010-09-19 16:06:56

@flamelab: Guess what I implemented this morning. ;-)

anonymous_user · 2010-09-19 16:20:20

Very nice!

flamelab · 2010-09-19 16:22:48

Pierre wrote:

@flamelab: Guess what I implemented this morning. ;-)

Nice !!

Arch Linux

#26 2010-09-18 10:04:38

Re: Fighting spammers

#27 2010-09-18 10:08:50

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