Comments on: The Spammers Are Coming

by: Chrissie

Sun, 03 Dec 2006 12:42:04 +0000

Newp! It’s number 12. I can’t figure out which one is number 1 actually (can you tell I’m a bit clueless *shifty* ); the ones at the top of the list are 2 and 3.

by: Andrew Crystall

Sat, 02 Dec 2006 18:31:16 +0000

Chrissie, a question - is the politics forum the lowest *numbered*?

Because that’s what I meant (again, should of been clearer)

by: Chrissie

Sat, 02 Dec 2006 08:46:22 +0000

I’ll just add that it’s gotten really horrid on the Achaea forums too. If I had a dollar for each of those threads I’ve deleted, I’d be filthy stinkin’ rich.
And unfortunately, the “invisible forum at the top” idea wouldn’t work there… almost all of the bots post in Politics for some reason, which is near the bottom but not at the very bottom of the list.
What could work would be auto-deleting any threads that have a “:)” smiley in the header, ’cause all of the bots use those and no one else ever does -___-

by: Andrew Crystall

Fri, 01 Dec 2006 15:01:44 +0000

Well yes, but as I said making the the posting computer (sorry, wasn’t clear on that side - not the Human) work through a 5 second processing task would rapidly jam the spammer’s PC. And I can live with my PC doing it..

Sure, they can “only” then send twenty spams per minute, but that’s ruinously low compared to the current rate, AND if they’re hijacking PC’s people WILL notice when they start using 90% CPU time on that task.

by: chas

Thu, 30 Nov 2006 21:53:49 +0000

As Doogal mentions, most of the tools that block machine readability also block access by blind users. While I love kittenAuth, ( http://www.thepcspy.com/kav2test?close=1 ) that IS the downfall of the system…

by: Matt

Tue, 28 Nov 2006 18:13:48 +0000

You’d be surprised how much Spam blogs get, Andrew. The spam is auto-edited out of the Forge by a service that looks for spam across many, many blogs and categorizes similar posts as spam. It doesn’t keep the spammers out (of course, you don’t have to register to post here either) unfortunately.

by: Doogal

Tue, 28 Nov 2006 14:18:34 +0000

Most of the ideas that have been presented forget the fact that the IRE muds are played by blind people and a text reader will not be able to determine what is in that picture.

by: Andrew Crystall

Tue, 28 Nov 2006 11:41:38 +0000

For forums, you can make an human user-invisible forum which is “first on the list”. 90%+ of spambots will post there.

For posting on blogs and the like, the idea of a ~5 second peocessing task you need to do before the post shows returns. The average poster will wait 5 seconds. The average spam PC will be seriously impacted.

by: Matt

Tue, 28 Nov 2006 07:50:08 +0000

Yeah, I’d have no problem with implementing it for something like the Forge, but for most commercial enterprises (insofar as the Forge is just my personal blog rather than really ‘part’ of Iron Realms), increasing the registration burden is not an enviable option.

by: Dellaster

Tue, 28 Nov 2006 07:46:37 +0000

Point taken. But …

I had in mind small sites, like The Forge, rather than big ones like Myspace. A spam bot’s programmer would have no incentive to scrape the specific picture, logic puzzle, or whatever off of one blog among millions to get past that one registration.

The bar for entry with my examples seems pretty low. Of course the blogger/site admin would decide if such a test was appropriate for her site. It would be an optional, extra feature for blog/site software. Personally I’m not sure I’d desire comments from someone who couldn’t do, say, example E. What could they offer a discussion if they couldn’t follow a link and understand a short paragraph? Am I being elitist here?

Thanks for the response. I can see now why the idea hasn’t been implemented.