Spam, Spam, Spam, Spam!
I am so glad that I have started to use my 'blog again; I had forgotten the joy that deleting all the 'spam' comments can bring! Checking the WHOIS information, most seem to be coming from the Ukraine...
View ArticlePHP Text Captcha
In the post A More Accessible Alternative to Graphical Capchas, I discussed a method of using a question/answer system for determining whether one is dealing with a human visitor or a naughty robot....
View ArticleAnother PHP Comment-despamming technique
Another method for de-spamming web log comments is illustrated in wordinbox.php. In this instance, a word is selected from a list; the user is asked to include the word in their post, the word being...
View ArticleSpams with images: an experiment
Recently, I moved to using Dspam for spam filtering, as SpamAssassin just wasn't doing the job. Following training, Dspam detection rates appeared good, although a certain type of spam where the body...
View ArticleAnother Address Lost
Spammers have finally started sending to blog2@smiffysplace.com. Good luck to them, because that address is now history. Although I get a large amount of spam through my business address (which I will...
View ArticleUnwelcome Visitors
For a server with no publicly advertised addresses, I get a steady stream of hits on my backup Web server – none of them good. For those who are interested, I have created an annotated text file,...
View ArticleMSNbot – Ban the Bot, Or Not?
I am quite happy to have search engine robots visiting Smiffy’s Place, following the links and indexing the content. The majority of my robot visitors seem to do just that, and are no trouble at all....
View ArticleNo Comment Spam – Yet
After a fortnight, it may still be early days; however, since writing the code to allow Smiffy’s Place to take comments, I have yet to deal with any Comment Spam. There are a few possible reasons for...
View ArticleProject Honeypot: Closed for Maintenance
I paid Project Honeypot a visit this morning to get instructions for the http:BL facility and found the site closed for maintenance. The explanation is that there are insufficient resources available...
View ArticleProject Honeypot Is Back – Sort Of
As reported recently, the Project Honeypot public web servers had been taken out of commission due to problems with insufficient infrastructure. I have started to receive reports of visits to honeypots...
View ArticleA More Accessible Alternative to Graphical Capchas
Reading a blog post on comment spam has minded me to describe a solution that I have worked on. The ability to send postcards from web sites would be nice, if it weren’t for the abuse that such...
View ArticleSpam, Spam, Spam, Spam!
I am so glad that I have started to use my 'blog again; I had forgotten the joy that deleting all the 'spam' comments can bring! Checking the WHOIS information, most seem to be coming from the Ukraine...
View ArticleSpam reduction patch for WordPress 2.x
In a previous post, I described a method for doing a partial validation of e-mail addresses of those posting comments to a WordPress 'blog. The patch I created worked for WordPress 1.x running on...
View ArticleSpam, Spam, Spam, Spam!
I am so glad that I have started to use my 'blog again; I had forgotten the joy that deleting all the 'spam' comments can bring! Checking the WHOIS information, most seem to be coming from the Ukraine...
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