Spam bots

[AggieDave 6]

HH,

It looks like DZ.com is getting hit hard by spam bots. Just now I looked and there are over 1100 guests, nearly all of those shown on the small chart is looking at UserProfiles.

Maybe it might be a good idea to place User Profiles as something you can't see unless you're a registered user and logged in?

--"When I die, may I be surrounded by scattered chrome and burning gasoline."

[DeNReN 0]

Funny...I was just asking another commer about that...took a screen shot myself....BTW...what does "bad action" mean??

[AggieDave 6]

  Quote

what does "bad action" mean??

A really bad karate movie?

I have no clue, but I'm sure HH could figure it out (since this is his baby, much customized from the original forum software used).

--"When I die, may I be surrounded by scattered chrome and burning gasoline."

[DeNReN 0]

The Guest Book would seem to agree with you on the spam bot theory...prob looking for email addys in viewer info

I'll second the idea of only regestered users being able to access profiles....there's enough ppl paranoid about there profiles as it is

[AggieDave 6]

HH,

Now that I've seen it and think about it, I've been checking the who's online more often...its going on all the time, in large quantities and generally only on user information.

--"When I die, may I be surrounded by scattered chrome and burning gasoline."

[AndyMan 7]

I suspect that requiring registrations to view profiles would eventually be overcome - spam-bots would just add registration to their script.

I wonder if maybe obscuring email addresses with a rotating SPAM obfuscation? Slashdot uses one, such that email addresses get displayed like: chicagoandy@nOsPam.gmail.com. The obfuscation technique changes weekly.

_Am

__

You put the fun in "funnel" - craichead.

[AggieDave 6]

  Quote

I wonder if maybe obscuring email addresses with a rotating SPAM obfuscation? Slashdot uses one, such that email addresses get displayed like: chicagoandy@nOsPam.gmail.com. The obfuscation technique changes weekly.

That's not a bad idea either.

The sad part is, I had stuff like that in a display address for a LONG time on DZ.com (now I don't have an address listed) and I'd get PMs from people confused, telling me my addy was bad simply because they didn't know to take the "spam killer" out of the address.

Then again, if its adopted across the site, it can be included in the FAQ and maybe people will learn something about web usage.

--"When I die, may I be surrounded by scattered chrome and burning gasoline."

[sangiro 26]

It was not a spam-bot... it was Google. The suggestion is still be a good one though....

Safe swoops
Sangiro

[AggieDave 6]

  Quote

It was not a spam-bot... it was Google.

Just as well...although maybe people wouldn't like their profiles crawled and logged by google...

--"When I die, may I be surrounded by scattered chrome and burning gasoline."

[sangiro 26]

Changed this so only registred users can view the profiles. Good suggestion.

Safe swoops
Sangiro

[AggieDave 6]

Woot. Thanks HH!

--"When I die, may I be surrounded by scattered chrome and burning gasoline."

[bob.dino 1]

If in the future you find you need more address protection, don't display the user's email address at all - replace it with an 'email this person' button/link.

After filling out a form similar to a PM, dropzone.com sends an email to the desired recipient, with the Reply-To set to the email address of the message author.

That way the recipient's email address is only disclosed if and when they reply to the original sender.

[dragon2 2]

But then everybody has to fix the 'nospam' and whatnot that's in the addresses now, first!

ciel bleu,
Saskia