[geeklog-devel] Anti Spam Features

[Vincent Furia]

Sorry, I wasn't too clear.  What I meant was to initially ban only 
anonymous comments from an IP that is spamming the comments (with the 
assumption most spammers won't go through the trouble of spamming).  
This could be implmented on the first spam recieved and would hopefully 
limit the trouble caused by spammers behind large proxies (like AOL).  
If a spammer does register, then you can block by username/email.  And 
if you have a really persistant, pain in the ass spammer, then you can 
completely block by IP.  This way an admin can allow anonymous comments 
generally, but block anonymous comments from specific IPs.

I'd also note that it may be a good idea to tie this in with Geeklog's 
ability to send emails (i.e. a banned IP won't be able to submit 
comments or send email to site users).

This may be exactly what you were already talking about, but I just 
wanted to make sure I was clear on it.

-Vinny

Tony Bibbs wrote:

> Yeah, obviously you would start by banning anonymous comments.  What I 
> was after is the more difficult use case of admins who want to allow 
> anonymous comments yet prevent spam.  Good clarification though as, 
> obviously, banning a username is much easier and reliable to do than 
> an IP.
>
> Vincent Furia wrote:
>
>> One thing I'd recommend is rather than a total ban on an IP address, 
>> at least initially, only ban anonymous users from posting comments.  
>> Then you can ban from there based on email address/username.  And 
>> then only as a last resort ban all comments from an IP address.
>>
>> -Vinny
>>
>> Tom Willett wrote:
>>
>>> Add the ip to the comments in geeklog and my ban plugin could easily 
>>> handle the rest. All I would have to do is add the logic to check 
>>> for the repeated spam comments.
>>>
>>>
>>> -- 
>>> Tom Willett
>>> tomw at pigstye.net
>>>
>>> ---------- Original Message -----------
>>> From: Tony Bibbs <tony at tonybibbs.com>
>>> To: Geeklog Development <geeklog-devel at lists.geeklog.net>
>>> Sent: Tue, 28 Oct 2003 09:09:17 -0600
>>> Subject: [geeklog-devel] Anti Spam Features
>>>
>>>  
>>>
>>>> As noted in the forums of Geeklog.net it appears a growing trend is 
>>>> the spamming of blogs.  With Geeklog a big player in this arena I 
>>>> think we would be wise to start thinking up ways to implement anti-
>>>> spam measures.
>>>>
>>>> I think the start would be to be able to mark comments as spam.  
>>>> When a comment is identified as spam I think the IP should be 
>>>> logged.  In the config.php file I think we could then set a spam 
>>>> threshold at say 5. What that means is if a an IP is tied to 
>>>> spamming the Geeklog site five times then we would ban that IP.  I 
>>>> know using IP's isn't the greatest but my hunch is 99% of this sort 
>>>> of spam would come from static IP's and not proxy IP's.  However, 
>>>> we should still allow admins to turn this feature on or off.
>>>>
>>>> One other bit of useful logic would be to check if the source IP of 
>>>> spam has been tied to comments which weren't identified as spam.  
>>>> If we did that then in our logic we could basically check a) has 
>>>> the IP hit the threshold, if so has it been used in non-spam 
>>>> comments.  If it *has* been used in non-spam comments then we could 
>>>> assume it is from a proxied IP and not ban the IP.
>>>>
>>>> I also think later versions of this could use MySQL's full text 
>>>> searching capabilities.
>>>>
>>>> To start, if we were to add the IP to the comment table I think we 
>>>> could write a plugin to do all this.  OF course this assumes that a 
>>>> plugin API is called when a comment is submitted which may or may 
>>>> not be the case ( I can't remember).
>>>>
>>>> I'm sure you guys may have other ideas too.
>>>>
>>>> -- 
>>>> +--------------------------------------------------------------------
>>>> --+ |Tony Bibbs         |[R]egardless of what you may think of our 
>>>> penal   | |tony at tonybibbs.com |system, the fact is that every man 
>>>> in jail is one | |                   |less potential fisherman to 
>>>> clutter up your       | |                   |favorite pool or pond. -
>>>> -Ed Zern                  | +----------------------------------------
>>>> ------------------------------+
>>>>
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>>>>   
>>>
>>>
>>> ------- End of Original Message -------
>>>
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>>
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