Re: web spam block less awful than Captcha?

From: MJ Ray <mjr_at_nyob>
Date: Mon, 24 Oct 2011 18:15:28 +0100
To: CODE4LIB_at_LISTSERV.ND.EDU
Ken Irwin wrote:
> Some of our online forms (contact, archives request, etc.) have been
> getting a bunch of spam lately. I have heretofore avoided using any
> of those obnoxious Captcha things and would rather not start now. (I
> personally loathe them and they keep getting harder, which tells me
> that the spambots are probably better at them than we are...)

You are a hero and I wish there were more like you.  I am getting
bored with being locked out of more and more websites.

> Does anyone have some good/easy/free/less-stressful spam-inhibiting ideas?

blogspam.net (a FOSS Akismet-like service), manually-maintained
blocklists, trying to design things so that the return on investment
for spammers is fairly low, rate limiting and if you really are stuck,
textcaptcha.com has more ideas and a textual captcha service.

I've been using a combination of those for years and never had much
of a spam problem for long.

Regards,
-- 
MJ Ray (slef), member of www.software.coop, a for-more-than-profit co-op.
Webmaster, Debian Developer, Past Koha RM, statistician, former lecturer.
In My Opinion Only: see http://mjr.towers.org.uk/email.html
Available for hire for various work through http://www.software.coop/
Received on Mon Oct 24 2011 - 13:16:16 EDT