Comments on: Parasite spam on p2pnet

By: Reader's Write

Reader's Write — Thu, 05 Oct 2006 06:48:26 +0000

> what if someone doesn’t really know how to compute those values by hand?

This is why I am not suggesting it as an anti-spam tool.

I hope that an average person knows the first name of George Bush or Bill Gates. Those questions can be asked in a CAPTCHA.

> sin(2*pi) is going to give you a different answer depending on how far you take pi out.

sin(2*pi) is zero (argument is in radians)

By: Reader's Write

Reader's Write — Thu, 05 Oct 2006 06:45:26 +0000

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pi

By: Reader's Write

Reader's Write — Sat, 30 Sep 2006 14:18:44 +0000

That is useful, but what if someone doesn’t really know how to compute those values by hand? And what is lim anyways? And sin(2*pi) is going to give you a different answer depending on how far you take pi out.

By: Reader's Write

Reader's Write — Thu, 28 Sep 2006 20:23:28 +0000

Very unlikely it is automatic. There are other sites without CAPTCHA’s to post the spam on – it is not worth the effort to customise it for this site if no other site runs it. However, if your CAPTCHA system is not custom, the spammers may already have developed a CAPTCHA solver.

From my experience, providing a form field with a question “What is the name of RIAA president” or “what colour is an orange” stops automated spam because it is custom enough (not seen on any other site).

You can also post linear equations for people to solve. ax + b = c. Type x into the form

Of course, I am not talking about frightening but trivial things like:

lim (1+1/x)
x -> inf

lim (ln (x))
x -> e^2

lim (ln (x)) + sqrt(4)
x -> e^2

lim (ln (x)) + sqrt(4) + sin (2*pi)
x -> e^2

By: Reader's Write

Reader's Write — Thu, 28 Sep 2006 20:12:55 +0000

People in developing countries would be paid to enter spam on sites and would cost as much as developing an automated spambot.

By: Reader's Write

Reader's Write — Thu, 28 Sep 2006 19:39:00 +0000

perhaps adding a “report this response as spam” button would make your job easier? i’m sure a lot of us that read the site would be more than happy to do our part to point out spam comments.

By: Reader's Write

Reader's Write — Thu, 28 Sep 2006 00:22:32 +0000

Since you had mentioned that the validation string is being worked on, I thought I would try another post. Mostly I’ve stopped posting because at some point, the strings seem to gang up on me with multiples of hard to distinguish characters and it becomes a guessing game. At the point that it was taking 7 or more guesses at the string it became frustrating to attempt to get past the validation guardian to put the post up. Since that time, I’ve just read the articles and made no comment whatever knowing that if I did the frustration levels would rise with the constant inability to tell what character was what.

As to the spam and it’s presence on the site, there have been several times that I put my thoughts below them. Why would anyone, certainly those of us who have had their posting life made harder, encourage these idiots by going to any of the links posted? If anything I was coming behind them posting a reply with the topic warning others not to even bother with the click since there was no way to edit out nor any sort of mods on hand to take care of the deletion of those annoying posts.

It is nice to hear that at some point I may be able to return to posting again. I’m not going to do without Firefox and will give up posting here before I will give up the browser. I want nothing to do with IE other than associating it with the uninstall. It’s my computer and I can and will chose what browser I wish to use and it doesn’t include the security glitch called IE.

I will look forward to the day that we hear the spammer has been busted by the legal authorities. Any other sort of news like the last one where their net access to servers has been limited is also good news.

By: Reader's Write

Reader's Write — Thu, 28 Sep 2006 00:00:35 +0000

Sell a jenyooine Monty Python Spamalot Spam Can? Have you taken leave of your senses?

heh

(Thinks – wonder how much I’d get on eBay)

Cheers!

By: Reader's Write

Reader's Write — Wed, 27 Sep 2006 23:05:20 +0000

how much would u seel the spam can for?

By: Reader's Write

Reader's Write — Wed, 27 Sep 2006 22:53:35 +0000

The sheer quantity makes me think it’s automated.

“it is completely plausible that the issue is some moron sitting there just manually adding comments with spam.”

You’re correct if you can find someone dumb enough to pump in scores of spams every day. heh.

Cheers!

By: Reader's Write

Reader's Write — Wed, 27 Sep 2006 22:30:33 +0000

just curious but what makes you think this is automated spam?

it is completely plausible that the issue is some moron sitting there just manually adding comments with spam.

ultimately i think you are going to have to find a trusted person to manually remove the spam OR set some kind of flagging system where users can mark some items as spam and have you look into them.

just thought i’d give you my 2 cents on it