spam?

[Lawrence Lee]

Simone,

There is a Manila comment callbacks available to directly deal with the
comment box that you could tie into (and prevent updates from overwriting):

http://frontier.userland.com/manila/callbacks/manilaComments

An IP block isn't that effective because they have so many. Limiting the
number of links in a post is also helpful.

There are also some other projects to block referer and comment spam: the
referer plugin from Thomas Creedon and the blocker.root.

Lawrence Lee
UserLand Software
www.userland.com
 

> -----Original Message-----
> From: manila-newbies-bounces at userland.com 
> [mailto:manila-newbies-bounces at userland.com] On Behalf Of 
> Simone Bettini
> Sent: February 11, 2005 5:31 AM
> To: Manila-Newbies at userland.com
> Subject: Re: spam?
> 
> We had the very same problem on some of the manila blogs we 
> are hosting on our servers.
> 
> I tried at first to prevent the spamming changing the form in 
> the manila function that generates and processes it, hoping 
> that the spambot did simply a post without previously loading 
> the form, but unfortunately it was able to prevent any of the 
> strategies I tried.
> 
> I suppose such spam is generated from a script that drives a 
> real browser filling in the form and submitting it, so looks 
> like any client side strategy is defeated.
> 
> The solution I found was to install a filter on the code that 
> receives the comment and checks if the body contains some 
> keywords and strings from a list I keep up to date, and in 
> such a case it simply doesn't save the comment.
> 
> Since then I was able to prevent further spamming just 
> keeping the banned strings up to date. This approach may fail 
> as soon as the spammers will realize and start s.c.r.ambling 
> words, but as liks to sites can't be changed they can anyway 
> be used to stop the comments.
> 
> Hopefully the introduction of the nofollow property with the 
> recent manila update will make many of them desist as part of 
> the benefit derived from spamming ceases.
> 
> Unfortunately I had to change one of manila functions to 
> achieve the result and it is possible that further updates 
> will overwrite it, so I am keeping a copy of it apart to be 
> able to restore the spam filtering code, unless userland guys 
> will come out with a similar or better solution.
> 
> Would you want to try installing my modified code just let me 
> know and I will clean up it a bit and let you have it. Keep 
> in mind that it will come with no guarantee and you will have 
> to go and edit manually the stopwords table as it lacks any 
> user interface.
> 
> Simone
> 
>   Il giorno 11/feb/05, alle 12:55, Paul Hampel ha scritto:
> 
> > My blog has been getting spammed from an online poker/gambling site 
> > and an online drug company. Can you give me any ideas on 
> how to stop 
> > this? I've been deleting their memberships and messages, 
> but they come 
> > back in a few hours with even more stuff.
> >
> > Thanks!
> >
> > Paul Hampel , Technology Coordinator
> > George Washington High School
> > 215-961-2001
> > http://blog.gwhs.phila.k12.pa.us/
> >
>