[Pmwiki-users] spammers - using a wheel that has been invented

Patrick R. Michaud pmichaud
Mon Nov 29 09:33:56 CST 2004


On Mon, Nov 29, 2004 at 09:54:59AM -0500, Neil Herber wrote:
> In the PHPBB2 system, they have a facility called "word censors". If a user 
> attempts to post with a word that appears on the list, PHPBB2 substitutes 
> replacement text. The word list and the substitutes are controlled by the 
> administrator. Perhaps PmWiki could adopt this idea.

Well, an administrator can already do this by just adding custom markup--

Markup("spammer.cn", "<links", "/spammer\\.cn/", "suppressed");

However, a spammer can get around this by using alternate encodings
or IP addresses instead.  For example, I can write www.example.com
in an href as any of:
    http://www.example.&#99;&#111;&#109;
    http://www.example.&#67;&#79;&#77;
    http://192.0.34.166
    http://3221234342

So, we'd have to also convert html entities and disallow numeric addresses.
Perhaps wiki spammers wouldn't ever write links this way because it defeats 
the purpose of spamming (i.e., increasing Google page rank), but I 
wouldn't bet on it.

And besides, it's fairly easy for spammers to create redirects to get around
the blacklists (that can also deceive Googlebot into not detecting the 
redirect).  

I'm not saying blacklists aren't another useful tool for us to have, I'm 
just pointing out some of their limitations and that they just add another
level of maintenance and complexity.

Pm



More information about the pmwiki-users mailing list