[pmwiki-users] what to do in case of massive spam ?

[Petko Yotov]

On 2016-03-22 21:20, Simon wrote:
> I'm curious as to to how the bot got past the 'bot protection measures' 
> in
> place,
> or is this again because the is custom code being written to defeat 
> them?

The Cookbook:SpamFilters recipe, as well as SiteAdmin.Blocklist work for 
most general purpose spambots. But we want real people to not be annoyed 
by the filters and blocklists, or very rarely, and in that case we 
explain what has triggered the filters, so the real person can modify 
the posted text and complete the edit.

General purpose spambots search the internet for wikis, blogs and 
forums, and post spam when they find a way. Our Spam filters will block 
many of those, and they simply move to the next website.

Now, a decided, dedicated bot operator is a real person, and if we 
continue to explain why the post is blocked, the operator can adapt the 
text posted by the bots.

I write "bots" but a dedicated person may do this without "bots 
(programs)". With a lot of time, one can do this manually. (Although, 
using 20+ IP addresses makes it more likely to be bots.)

The Spam filters cannot prevent an attack from a dedicated person. We 
need to clean up after. :-)


> I trust too that you are able to clean up all the uploaded files.

I did.

> Is there a process in place to identify and remove all files that are 
> not
> linked to PmWiki pages?

Last August I reviewed all uploads: curiously only 22 files were orphan. 
I've archived them and removed them from the website.

Petko

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