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The continued spam saga

November 28, 2008 - 18:10 — ingo

Dear Registry Users,

most of you are probably aware of the spam problem which has grown to be incredibly annoying. Many of you diligently reported spam comments but it was a fight against windmills and quite frustrating. We get a lot of fake accounts and so on, despite the use of captchas.

I have now added a new detection module which I hope can reject spam comments before they are even posted. This module, like all spam filters, may cause false alarms and is likely not to be perfect. Please let me know if you experience any problems due to this!

Also, if you have any other suggestions on how to improve on this proble, let me know!

Cheers, Ingo

Comments

November 28, 2008 - 18:15 — schumaml

Currently we got many false positives. The best way to get past this is to submit the entry via the "Report spam filter error" feedback formular- just proceed when you get the spam warning, then we can teach the spam filters what's spam and what not.
November 29, 2008 - 11:38 — phonydream2

As a fellow Drupal user, I'm interested in any technique used to fight spam. Which module did you install and how has it been working out for you? Good luck with the new tactic!
November 29, 2008 - 11:41 — ingo

We're using http://drupal.org/project/spam Ppreviously I've also been trying http://drupal.org/project/abuse, which lets users report cases of abuse that are being missed. A combination of those might the best way to go but the abuse module currently has some issues with deleting content.
December 2, 2008 - 05:19 — PhotoComiX

i already reported errors in the new spam module seems the only reason why my message was blocked was that i posted other 5 messages in a few minutes at least was no any other apparent reason (as suspicious keywords ) to block it
December 2, 2008 - 10:50 — schumaml

Among the filters is a Bayes filter, which does require training. Currrently it is getting better and better, but does still catch some valid posts or comments.

December 16, 2008 - 15:29 — PhotoComiX

the report button seems gone, how to report spam as this http://www.registry.gimp.org/node/12742 now ?
December 3, 2008 - 21:17 — noelbush

Hi Ingo. I suggest you check out Mollom (http://drupal.org/project/mollom). It works very nicely and has excellent success. Noel
December 17, 2008 - 10:57 — ingo

I checked this out and we'll give it a try. Aggregating information across many sites should potentially deliver much more accurate detection. One issue I have with both modules is that reporting for older posts is impaired. We'll see what's possible to improve that.
December 12, 2008 - 03:51 — PhotoComiX

i believe most of our spam are created by XRumer plus Hrefer both from http://www.botmasternet.com/index.php (there click the link for "more info", i can't directly give that link will not work ) but maybe will be more useful download a free trial here http://www.botmasternet.com/registration/ref3217/ and check how it works I mean check what kind of protection that nasty tool can't bypass
January 22, 2009 - 22:05 — mixmagtmb

Thanks, for the link i now many spamers use this, but i have captha in CMS Data Life Engine use captcha and Xrumer cant post in automatic. скачать download masterтолкование снов
December 15, 2008 - 11:58 — onetruecathal

I think you will find far more success against spam if you allow non-members to report it when they see it. Having come here just 5 minutes ago, I've already found two or three "Nice site, blah blah" comments and could have reported them with ease if I didn't have to login. Have reported comments go under probation, where they are hidden unless a user wants to deliberately see them. Ideally, see to it that this folding prevents web spiders from seeing the comment, so A) Other spammers don't note that this is a vulnerable site and B) Google doesn't penalise you for carrying spam.
December 19, 2008 - 02:47 — Daniel Saltman

I'm very familiar with this because I took on a project myself trying to fight it. I had a great deal of sucess by blocking people who came form search engines for various search phrases. For example if someone came to my site with any of the following search words, chances are they are a spammer and it's safe to block them: http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=inurl%3A%2Fnode%2F++%22login+or+reg... Daniel Saltman BostonDan@gmail.com
December 19, 2008 - 19:02 — PhotoComiX

are "Login or register to post comments" the keyword ? well i can't imagine much other reasons then spamming to make a search with that keywords same results may be gained with "forum register "
January 20, 2009 - 18:30 — schumaml

According to the Mollom stats, this is working quite nice. Over one hundred spam messages are being blocked per day; the peak value has been 402 so far.
February 17, 2009 - 13:05 — schumaml

We're now approaching another level of magnitude - the number of blocked spam is getting closer and closer to 1000 per day.

May 3, 2009 - 11:48 — schumaml

The spam has died down to a "normal" level again - only about 200 spam attempts per day.

The peak was almost 1500 attempts per day in February.

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