lua-users home
lua-l archive

[Date Prev][Date Next][Thread Prev][Thread Next] [Date Index] [Thread Index]


> "Stopping spambots with hashes and honeypots"
> http://nedbatchelder.com/text/stopbots.html

I implemented this approach in Sputnik in late 2007 and it did cut
down the amount of spam dramatically. But it didn't stop all of it. My
guess is that people were coming to our sites to setup playback
attacks and would post crap to see if they could do it. They would
fail and eventually give up, but in the process of trying to set it up
they ended up vandalizing a few pages, which then needed to be fixed.
Then a week later someone else would come and try to do the same. It
never turned into a massive flood of spam (as it did before hashes and
honeypots) but it assured the need to do regular maintenance.

By contrast, adding captcha stopped all spam. When spammers see
captcha, they know to not waste their time (and yours!) trying to
figure out how to spam your site.

- yuri