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Mollom -- An Update

Posted Mon, 2008-09-22 22:20 by matthew

On September 11th I installed Mollom on this site and on The Nonprofit Commons. This morning, it was announced that Mollom is officially out of beta.

In the six months we've been beta-testing Mollom, we've blocked almost 9 million spam messages on thousands of sites.

Drupal Basics -- Dealing With Spam Part II

Posted Thu, 2008-09-11 22:20 by matthew

One of the sites I help manage has been over run with World of Warcraft spam in recent weeks. It has been relatively easy to ban email addresses of offending users, remove the comments, and move on. Add to that, use of Captcha, and the Spam has been kept in check.

I don't want to actively manage spam.

Drupal Basics -- Dealing With Spam

Posted Tue, 2008-08-05 19:53 by matthew

If you allow any kind of user generated content on your Drupal site including comments, you will invariably start to see users crop up with user names like: "gyigrrgq", "porn", and "buy viagra". At best, the users sit in the user's table and do nothing. At worst, the users probe and then blast your Drupal instance with more spam than you can shake a stick at. Often the technique will be to leave comments on old content in the hopes that site managers won't notice it but it will generate some clickthroughs to whatever site the spammer is targeting.

What I like to do is set up a block of recent comments. Sometimes it is public and sometimes it is private to a single role depending the on the site-owner's needs. This is a very simple thing to do and will allow you to see new spam comments at a single glance. If you check your site every few days, you'll catch any spammy ugliness.

Spamming Redux

Posted Thu, 2007-07-19 01:46 by matthew

I just blocked the jhainsworth account I wrote about on the 11th and deleted every last comment.  In the space of just a few minutes, this character posted 30 or so comments all with the same title "hello" and the same inane body, like "excellent" or "so true" or "good point" without any reference to the tenor of the message.
So, whether this was the work of a spammer getting ready to bomb me or just an irritant, it is done with.
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Ever Thought You Might Be Targetted for Spam?

Posted Wed, 2007-07-11 18:54 by matthew

http://www.dogstar.org/drupal/node/7#comment-52

http://www.dogstar.org/drupal/node/8#comment-53

Old posts, almost meaningless comment. How much do you want to bet this ends up being a spammer...

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Cleaning Up Accounts

Posted Tue, 2007-06-12 04:34 by matthew

Today I deleted close to 100 accounts on the site that had usernames like:

  • ektjayt
  • hiiithj
  • kdjgytt
  • sksjthjt

with email addresses like:

  • djsf@web.ru
  • adlskjat@iti.ua
  • sktjlat@gskthh.us
  • 6igljyjs@sndkhj.it

These are attempts by spammers to see if they can easily create accounts to add spam comments to posts on the site. Typically spammers will choose old pages deep in a site like this in hopes that they won't be found easily. On the TechSoup Site we ended up having to block all comments except by folks we have vetted as being trustworthy.

Comment Spammers

Posted Thu, 2007-05-17 07:08 by matthew

One of the sites I work on, Nonprofits in Second Life, has gone through two waves of spammers putting unsavoury comments into early blog posts--presumably to try and avoid detection from the site management. The comments have been lists of pretty unpleasant links.

Web 2.0 applications are supposed to allow for interactivity and immediacy. People expect to be able to submit content and experience instant gratification.

Spammers will target sites that they think will not have enough review to get content up on line for even a few days. This is a particular challenge for small nonprofits and volunteer based groups. Where do you find the man-power to review what is being posted on your site?