wiki: Hi :)
Subject:
Re: [wiki] Hi :)
From:
"James Hess" ####@####.####
Date:
11 Aug 2008 13:25:31 +0100
Message-Id: <6eb799ab0808110525s9116de2j55a9daf435a9ea76@mail.gmail.com>
On Mon, Aug 11, 2008 at 4:40 AM, jdd ####@####.#### wrote:
> however, I'm surprised. is the spam generated by a robot? if the spam come
> from a people, such system is of no use.
I would suspect it to be a bit of both.
Wiki/forum spammers spider the web looking for forum/wiki they know
how to spam.
Which is probably simple in most cases.. find edit/new page link,
find textareas on the page, add random junk the text area, post.
If the Wiki does tricks and requires javascript for filling some things in,
the spammers may have less success with dumb roboscripts...
Dumb spammers may get a one-time boost from a human to solve the captcha
the bloddy spammers may actually screen-scrape and outsource captcha-answering
now, at a few pennies or so per answer to get the registration to
start spewing lots
of crap per answer.... which they can measure as well-worth it if the
site is visible
enough, and they get the click-throughs
I would suggest checking URLs submitted/added in page edits against
a blacklist
and a few DNSBLs like the AHBL rhsbl.
This is something that should be available from Wiki software...
though the spammers may be well-aware of how to get around anti-spam features
in published software
(They've had plenty of time with other Wikis running product X to learn of
product X's weakness/flaws that allow spam, if any)
--
-J
