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+--- Forum: Web Design & Internet (https://makestation.net/forumdisplay.php?fid=62)
+--- Thread: Spambot "Harvester Killer" (/showthread.php?tid=2806)
Spambot "Harvester Killer" - Darth-Apple - March 25th, 2020
I saw this today. It's honestly a very neat idea. It basically traps spambots into an infinite loop of reloading the page to fill their database with bogus email addresses. Assuming it works (and xrumer isn't configured to not point to this website anymore), it's a genius idea.
As such, I've put a link to it here. Anyone heard of this (or this idea) before?
http://www.spamhelp.org/harvesterkiller/
RE: Spambot "Harvester Killer" - Guardian - March 25th, 2020
That's awesome! Need it one some different pages I would expect though. Configure my bot not to pull from pages with * or domains with * in it. Overall I love the idea though.
RE: Spambot "Harvester Killer" - Darth-Apple - March 25th, 2020
That's my concern with it. It'd be too easy for someone to release a new version of xrumer that blocks it by default.
In theory, the idea could be done without requiring a separate page. It'd be possible to do inline, but doing so would take server resources directly on the website itself.
RE: Spambot "Harvester Killer" - Plushy - March 26th, 2020
And... works? I mean, looking the site and the last site news dates from 2008... quite sure spambots should have improved since then o.o
RE: Spambot "Harvester Killer" - Darth-Apple - March 26th, 2020
Didn’t see the 2008 part. There’s no way they haven’t caught on in 12 years.
RE: Spambot "Harvester Killer" - Kyng - April 9th, 2020
I use it myself (after one of my members recommended it to me).
Not sure how much it's helped, though - since I get plenty of spammers anyway. (Though, fortunately, MyBB's spam protection blocks most of them
!)
RE: Spambot "Harvester Killer" - Darth-Apple - April 9th, 2020
Oh that's right, you use MyBB too. It's used to be pretty trash when it came to spam management, but it seems to have gotten better over the years. Zalost would know more that I would on how many we get (he's unofficially the designated Spambot Banner
), but it hasn't been too bad lately.
RE: Spambot "Harvester Killer" - Plushy - April 15th, 2020
A good captcha question different than 2+2= is a nice spam filter, specially when the question is in a non-English language. Since I change the question to easy things about the forum's topic (pokemon) + mybb protection + cloudflare protection I haven't ANY single spambot like in six months!!
RE: Spambot "Harvester Killer" - Darth-Apple - April 15th, 2020
I had to look it up on your forum. I remember registering, and I was like... there is no way any spambot is going to get through this.
RE: Spambot "Harvester Killer" - Plushy - April 15th, 2020
I think another easy way to protect is a captcha with a simple instruction like...
Who is the founder of Microsoft? (write a _ between names like Jonh_Smith)
So, instead the bot could google Bill Gates and paste it is nearly imposible it can follow the instructions to write Bill_Gates instead
RE: Spambot "Harvester Killer" - Darth-Apple - April 15th, 2020
(April 15th, 2020 at 2:41 AM)Plushy Wrote: I think another easy way to protect is a captcha with a simple instruction like...
Who is the founder of Microsoft? (write a _ between names like Jonh_Smith)
So, instead the bot could google Bill Gates and paste it is nearly imposible it can follow the instructions to write Bill_Gates instead
That's a good one. The only way a bot is getting through that question is if it is human-assisted.