[Oscailt] Anti Spam Measures

[Terence S]

Hi Mike,
Actually lately I have been adding some anti-spam measures to the contact form. Some of them are checked in, but I have added more since then. These deal with spammers using the contact form and reported posts functionality (which actually is the same thing)...... but this is not what you require.

As to the feature that you suggest. It would be tricky to implement alright. The first thing that I would say though is that if you setup a search for words like 'serial spammer' as the author or whatever, I think they would very quickly change the name and eventually would just start using the same names as ordinary users. In other words, I reckon after a fair amount of work, they could easily side step that anti-spam measure.

Actually we get that spammer on IMC-Irl -"The Lords Daily Rant"

If you did add such code, it would have to be tied into the file objects/indyruntime/publishdisplay.inc

BTW, the latest version of the above file, has a new feature for editors that allows them via a btn click to decapitalize uppercase titles. This is actually quite handy.

Another thing you ought to know is that the latest version of the IP monitor screen allows you to sort the display by IP address. This makes it much much easier to see who is posting under different names. If you had that version of the PHP file, it might help in the meantime.

Perhaps there is another way around the problem...... one possibility is that if the IP is dynamic but the PC itself is the same, then something could be implemented via cookies whereby you recognise the spammer and their cookie gets marked in some way so that next time around, the publish form detects it and blocks them from posting. Is this a possibility or do these people also use different computers each time? Not sure just yet though how to implement it.

rgds
Terence


Mike Tonks <fluffymike at googlemail.com> wrote: Hi there,

We are having a final push to get the bimc migration to oscailt3 completed - yes it's taken us a while but we are only a few volunteers, and the design by commitee can take a while :)

Just reading your wiki page for new anti-spam features:  http://docs.indymedia.org/view/Devel/OscailtAntiSpam

I have a question / suggestion.  How easy would it be to add a feature that scans new postings against some kind of rules / keywords,  e.g. for posters using a particular name, subject or words in the title of their post.  This is a common problem we get on bristol indymedia.  Ideally we would want to pick up anyone using the alias 'serial_spammer' or the subject 'The Lord's Daily Rant' and block them, either for that posting or automatically add their IP address to the banned IP's.  I would see this as a potential layer 8 of your already excellent spam protection system.  It would save us having to enable the ip monitoring and sit and wait for these people to post, and help get around the problem of non-static ip addresses. 

This feature has been requested by several of our editors and is based on several years of experience editing and removing spam / flame wars from the site, so I'm confident it would make a massive difference!
 
Could anyone tell me if this sounds sensible / possible, and either help out or point me towards where in the code this would need to be implemented.  It would be cool to get this approved and implemented within the code base so that we don't have to branch... 

I imagine what would be required would be a new admin section and database table, to hold the rules or banned words, and a bit of code in the appropriate place to scan each posting against any rules and take some action, probably calling the existing ip blocking function to ban the user. 

I'm happy to do any donkey work on this but I recall from a previous experience that the code base is quite complex and I was struggling to find my way around, so any help or advice from existing coders would be much appreciated. 

Regards, mike


       
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