On Thu, 16 Dec 2004, Jo Walsh wrote:
it seems like i am having quitq a few frustrating spam-related conversations recently.
On Wed 15 Dec 2004, Rev Simon Rumble simon@rumble.net wrote:
There's a helluva lot of wiki spam on that site. :(
looking for ways to hold off wiki spam without having to require user login, i tried patching CGI::Wiki(::Kwiki) to set a 'human=probably' cookie that you couldn't edit pages without.
It just seems to have slowed down the flood rather than stopped it, on heavily-spammed sites though.
I also changed the text 'Edit this page' to 'alter this page' on a couple of sites to attempt to help avert brute-force google based attacks.
I fear that the way this is going, there is going to have to be a 'proof of humanity' test, e.g. recognising numbers that are heavily distorted on a noisy background like all the free web/mail services now do.
It's my impression that a lot of spam comes not from bots, but from people in China or elsewhere where labor is cheap. Seems like antibot techniques won't help there -- you'd need smarter software...
Justin