Page 3 of 4
Posted: Sat Jan 22, 2005 2:18 pm
by fresh
question.. does bots come quipped with a user-agent.. since it is not assigned one by the registry like IE or Mozilla is? If not, then the lack of one could be an identifying mark and one could make a check point for that alone and stop all bots if not most.
regards
P.s. Check this:
1. Blind :: Seperate page for text based ONLY, compliant with reader
2. Deaf :: Seperate page for text based ONLY, compliant with reader
3. Ampatee :: Nothing should be done, can enlarge display
4. Mentally handicap :: Nothing should be done, needs shaparone
So again, a seperate .txt file for all pages textual content should be effiecient.
Posted: Sat Jan 22, 2005 6:57 pm
by timvw
5. Financial handicap :: Printout the pages for those without a PC :p
Posted: Sat Jan 22, 2005 10:59 pm
by fresh
lol.. i fall under that category.. im so broke i look at a lottery ticket as an investment.

Posted: Sat Jan 22, 2005 11:11 pm
by feyd
Posted: Sun Jan 23, 2005 12:26 am
by fresh
shisam.. here we go feyd, this should take care of ALL bots forever. Simply include a checkbox at the bottom of the posting form along with disable smilies, etc.. make it's value on the form say something like: 'If you are NOT a bot check this box', make some error checking for forgetful users and bots that wont know to tick the checkbox, which will halt the posting process and thus will eliminate all spams made by bots for good, or until they wise up.
regards
Posted: Sun Jan 23, 2005 5:19 am
by onion2k
fresh wrote:2. Deaf :: Seperate page for text based ONLY, compliant with reader
Whats stopping deaf people using an ordinary page with images and stuff?
Posted: Sun Jan 23, 2005 4:15 pm
by timvw
that's evil
a computer-voice reading machine... for deaf people
Posted: Sun Jan 23, 2005 5:00 pm
by John Cartwright
oh the madness
shisam.. here we go feyd, this should take care of ALL bots forever. Simply include a checkbox at the bottom of the posting form along with disable smilies, etc.. make it's value on the form say something like: 'If you are NOT a bot check this box', make some error checking for forgetful users and bots that wont know to tick the checkbox, which will halt the posting process and thus will eliminate all spams made by bots for good, or until they wise up.
wait a second, whats the stop the bot from ticking the checkmark?

Posted: Sun Jan 23, 2005 10:21 pm
by fresh
well they would have to hard code that in, which would mean more work for the drones and as far as i can tell spammers are lazy as hell.. but other than pure laziness, I suppose nothing would keep them from ticking the box.. however, introducing a new format would by you the time to think of something more permanent.. and could perhaps sway a percentage of spammers from even attempting to utilise this forum or any forum as a depo for spam..

Posted: Mon Jan 24, 2005 1:23 am
by AGISB
Well as the bot would submit to the page your form submits to the checkbox is nothing more than one variable he simply has to add to the submit.
You simply need something that the bot cannot automatically know when it submits. Like the hash I described above
Posted: Mon Jan 24, 2005 1:46 am
by fresh
what do you mean the captcha thing or the using one key at both ends thing? I would say between the two that the captcha concept would prove to be more secure, especially since brute-force can be taking advantage of in the case of supplying a valid constant string. But then again, I haven't seen a PoC concerning the hash concept you said you implemented on your own site, until I see it I can only assume it is less secure.
regards
EDIT: One way to prevent from advertising to spammers is to remove these lines from index.php
index.php wrote:
Our users have posted a total of 150481 articles
We have 13805 registered users
Most users ever online was 276 on Thu Dec 30, 2004 8:22 pm
indeed impressive but if I were a spammer those three lines would suggest to me a great place to point my bot and I even get an approximate day and time too.. I think that a number of things will be done to beat the bots and I think that removing advertisements such as those above is a progressive move.
Posted: Mon Jan 24, 2005 11:10 am
by magicrobotmonkey
combine the checkbox idea with a random string that is both assigned to the name of the checkbox and passed through the session or something and you might have somethins.
Posted: Wed Feb 02, 2005 10:55 am
by malcolmboston
this is crazy......
honestly out of the big commercial site, how many are compatable w/ text based browsers such as lynx and braille devices
Posted: Wed Feb 02, 2005 11:51 am
by onion2k
malcolmboston wrote:this is crazy......
honestly out of the big commercial site, how many are compatable w/ text based browsers such as lynx and braille devices
You'd be suprised. For example, bbc.co.uk works in
everything. It even still works in Netscape 1..
Posted: Fri Feb 04, 2005 3:33 am
by malcolmboston
BBC offers a text-only service which was obviously built for accessibility issues and internet speed problems.
however BBC is the exception to this case, many sites are now built from PSD's, a99% of sites that does this will not work properly for braille and text-only services.