Sex In The Public Square - Spam Prophylactic - Comments

The basic captcha module

Elizabeth — Wed, 25 Jul 2007 05:39:33 -0700

IThe basic captcha module is a math problem, and that's what we're using. We're not even using the riddler at this point. And you can see from my comments of last night (which I apparently never remembered to go back and publish until this morning!) that even the captcha part isn't working right here.

I'm off to do family stuff for the day but will be back tonight. JanieBelle I leave it all in your capable hands for now .... good luck!

Nope

JanieBelle — Tue, 24 Jul 2007 21:05:27 -0700

Doesn't work in IE either, even on the Try out a demonstration page.

Ya'd think they'd at least get it to work on their own damned blog, wouldn't ya?

Jesus, you'd think it was put out by MicroSoft or something.

Riddler isn't even working on the riddler site

JanieBelle — Tue, 24 Jul 2007 20:59:18 -0700

By following the link I gave in a previous reply, I noticed a "test" link, where you could go test it. Although some people's comments are on the thread, it didn't work for me there, either.

So it's not a problem with your install. I've just had an idea. I'm going to try it in *gasp of horror* Internet Explorer on a hunch....

Will let you know in a minute...

Spam People

JanieBelle — Tue, 24 Jul 2007 20:37:24 -0700

I forgot to mention. I've gotten ~~four or five~~ six or seven by this point, and only the first two actually made it past akismet, but I whacked them all just the same.

I like the pink background on the new comments, btw. Is that new, or am I just oblivious? ;) (EDIT TO ADD -Nevermind, I see that the pink is just for comments still in the moderation queue. I'm not oblivious, I'm confused. Sorry.)

I hope you can get that riddler thing working. I've got ideas about programming the questions (seemed like that was an option, but I wasn't sure) that would grant quite a bit of sadistic pleasure for me, personally...

Do spammers all suck big donkey balls?
Are spammers the terrorists of the interwebs?
Are you my mother?

In any event, does the regular captcha thing work, or is it not working any better than the riddler? Seems like since the riddler uses the regular captcha thing as its base, if one works the other should, and you'd the think the converse would also be true. Is that the case?

Done

JanieBelle — Tue, 24 Jul 2007 20:28:15 -0700

I hit the user list earlier this evening. There weren't as many as I had thought, but they're gone now.

what happened with captcha test

Elizabeth as guest — Tue, 24 Jul 2007 19:40:28 -0700

So, what happened is that I got a response that my answer was wrong (the question was "What is 1+1" and my answer was "2" so I'm pretty sure I was correct) and my comment went to the moderation queue, but not marked as likely spam.

I'm sure that's what will happen to this comment as well. (My question, by the way, is "What is 5+9" and I'm answering "14".

testing captcha

Elizabeth as guest — Tue, 24 Jul 2007 19:36:54 -0700

So the only problem so far is that just by clicking on the post title I get a message at the top that tells me my answer to the captcha question is incorrect. Of course I haven't even been prompted to answer a question at that point, so maybe I'd be puzzled. Now, at the bottom of the post page I want to leave a comment so I've entered my answer to the captcha (a simple math question) and am about to post my comment. We'll see what happens!

captcha modules

Elizabeth — Tue, 24 Jul 2007 05:46:32 -0700

JanieBelle, a while back I tried installing riddler and couldn't get it to work but we've made some changes since then so maybe we can try it again. Akismet had been doing a good job of catching those "people" spam comments for a while. They'd been sitting in the queue but not getting into the content. I wonder what happened to change that. And yes, we should probably go through and delete the account names that are clearly bots.

Captcha Modules

JanieBelle — Mon, 23 Jul 2007 19:09:24 -0700

Riddler sounds cute , and requires the basic captcha module, and both are available through Drupal.org .

Thoughts?

Doh.

JanieBelle — Mon, 23 Jul 2007 19:01:02 -0700

Drupal, right at the bottom of every single page.

Way to go, JanieBelle!

(sigh)

Sorry, it's not been a good week for me.

Spam Prophylactic

JanieBelle — Mon, 23 Jul 2007 18:59:25 -0700

We may want to consider some sort of captcha thing for comments by unregistered users.

I neutered three identical spam comments and sent them to comment oblivion just in the last few hours.

The comments had a subject line of "People" followed by a mass linkage. They were from an unverified commenter whose name was something like "jhbxwmkmef" or some crap.

While searching through the membership roll (where whatever the commenter's name did not appear - I guess that's what "unverified" means?) I noticed quite a few nonsensical member names that smell an awful lot like spammers as well. We'll have to keep an eye on those, and perhaps also implement the captcha rubber for registration, too.

I'll poke around the web and see if I can locate some sort of quality module.

What the heck is the name of the software we're using here again?