Hallo, mediawiki-l,
I have a lot of problems with drug spam on my wiki
http://arktur.de/Wiki/Spezial:Logbuch/delete http://arktur.de/Wiki/Spezial:Logbuch/block
The spammer (who uses a bundle of IP adresses) first creates a user with a name including the drug, and then he creates a user page with a contents like
Benutzer:Order Pletal Cilostazol No Prescription
Order Pletal Cilostazol No Prescription. Discounts and Bonuses, For women Drugs. Purchase Fast and Discreetly Online No Questions Asked!
***** Click This for Order Pletal Cilostazol No Prescription *****
-----------------------------------------------
I may not block signing up users (does mediawiki allow blocking new users?), and therefore I have to look at least daily for new users. The drug spammer changes round about every hour the user page, and because the user has signed up the spammer can feed the user page from everywhere.
Now I have more than 500 spammer users (exactly: I had). I delete the page, I block the user, I block the IP address range. It's a nasty job.
And I delete the user in the database using "phpMyAdmin"; that's the way the spammer has to sign up again and show the IP address of his actual system. That's a very ugly way.
=========================
* (Aktuell) (Vorherige) 2009-12-03T00:08:43 74.74.249.248 (Diskussion | Sperren) (809 Bytes) (Zurücksetzen | rückgängig)
* (Aktuell) (Vorherige) 2009-12-03T00:00:24 Order Pletal Cilostazol No Prescription (Diskussion | Beiträge | Sperren) (796 Bytes) (Die Seite wurde neu angelegt: "<h3><font color=blue>Order Pletal Cilostazol No Prescription. It's much cheaper than ordering at your local drugstore! No prescription is needed! <br><br> [http:/.")
=========================
And I block some IP address ranges via ".htaccess" - there is some strange inconsistency (?) within mediawiki; I have seen it especially with the address 76.245.246.55. I had blocked the range (at least I believed having blocked it), and the spammer used the address nevertheless.
-------------------------------------------------
Is there any chance a) to block such spam in a simplier way? b) to delete the user pages and the user entries in a simplier way?
Viele Gruesse! Helmut
I think we all have had this problem. I tried several extensions but nothing worked until I added captchas with the Confirm Edit extension. This still lets people create new accounts, but they have to solve a captcha. A pain for users but it works.
http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:ConfirmEdit
jake4d jake@debatrix.org 615.418.3858 www.debatrix.org
-----Original Message----- From: Helmut Hullen [mailto:Hullen@t-online.de] Sent: Friday, December 04, 2009 3:37 PM To: mediawiki-l@lists.wikimedia.org Subject: [Mediawiki-l] blocking drug spam
Hallo, mediawiki-l,
I have a lot of problems with drug spam on my wiki
http://arktur.de/Wiki/Spezial:Logbuch/delete http://arktur.de/Wiki/Spezial:Logbuch/block
The spammer (who uses a bundle of IP adresses) first creates a user with a name including the drug, and then he creates a user page with a contents like
Benutzer:Order Pletal Cilostazol No Prescription
Order Pletal Cilostazol No Prescription. Discounts and Bonuses, For women Drugs. Purchase Fast and Discreetly Online No Questions Asked!
***** Click This for Order Pletal Cilostazol No Prescription *****
-----------------------------------------------
I may not block signing up users (does mediawiki allow blocking new users?), and therefore I have to look at least daily for new users. The drug spammer changes round about every hour the user page, and because the user has signed up the spammer can feed the user page from everywhere.
Now I have more than 500 spammer users (exactly: I had). I delete the page, I block the user, I block the IP address range. It's a nasty job.
And I delete the user in the database using "phpMyAdmin"; that's the way the spammer has to sign up again and show the IP address of his actual system. That's a very ugly way.
=========================
* (Aktuell) (Vorherige) 2009-12-03T00:08:43 74.74.249.248 (Diskussion | Sperren) (809 Bytes) (Zurücksetzen | rückgängig)
* (Aktuell) (Vorherige) 2009-12-03T00:00:24 Order Pletal Cilostazol No Prescription (Diskussion | Beiträge | Sperren) (796 Bytes) (Die Seite wurde neu angelegt: "<h3><font color=blue>Order Pletal Cilostazol No Prescription. It's much cheaper than ordering at your local drugstore! No prescription is needed! <br><br> [http:/.")
=========================
And I block some IP address ranges via ".htaccess" - there is some strange inconsistency (?) within mediawiki; I have seen it especially with the address 76.245.246.55. I had blocked the range (at least I believed having blocked it), and the spammer used the address nevertheless.
-------------------------------------------------
Is there any chance a) to block such spam in a simplier way? b) to delete the user pages and the user entries in a simplier way?
Viele Gruesse! Helmut
_______________________________________________ MediaWiki-l mailing list MediaWiki-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/mediawiki-l
Hallo, Jake,
Du meintest am 04.12.09:
I have a lot of problems with drug spam on my wiki
http://arktur.de/Wiki/Spezial:Logbuch/delete http://arktur.de/Wiki/Spezial:Logbuch/block
[...]
I think we all have had this problem. I tried several extensions but nothing worked until I added captchas with the Confirm Edit extension. This still lets people create new accounts, but they have to solve a captcha. A pain for users but it works.
Seems to work as expected - thank you!
Tomorrow, after reading the apache logs, I'll know more ...
Viele Gruesse! Helmut
Hallo, Jake,
Du meintest am 04.12.09:
I have a lot of problems with drug spam on my wiki
http://arktur.de/Wiki/Spezial:Logbuch/delete http://arktur.de/Wiki/Spezial:Logbuch/block
I think we all have had this problem. I tried several extensions but nothing worked until I added captchas with the Confirm Edit extension. This still lets people create new accounts, but they have to solve a captcha. A pain for users but it works.
Seems to work: no new spammer entries. Thank you!
Viele Gruesse! Helmut
On 12/04/2009 04:37:00 PM, Helmut Hullen - Hullen@t-online.de wrote:
Hallo, mediawiki-l,
I have a lot of problems with drug spam on my wiki
http://arktur.de/Wiki/Spezial:Logbuch/delete http://arktur.de/Wiki/Spezial:Logbuch/blockThe spammer (who uses a bundle of IP adresses) first creates a user with a name including the drug, and then he creates a user page with a contents like
snip...
I may not block signing up users (does mediawiki allow blocking new users?), and therefore I have to look at least daily for new users. The drug spammer changes round about every hour the user page, and because the user has signed up the spammer can feed the user page from everywhere.
snip...
Is there any chance a) to block such spam in a simplier way? b) to delete the user pages and the user entries in a simplier way?
Viele Gruesse! Helmut
It seems to me that it might be less work if you moderated the creation of new accounts. I recently saw an extension, though I have not used it, that requires approval by an authorized person before a new account is created.
http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:ConfirmAccount
If you reviewed requests at least once a day, the same frequency you are removing spam accounts now, I think the delay would not be a great inconvenience to new users. I think moderation would drive the spammers away; it would certainly stop them from creating user names with the drug name embedded.
Let us know how you resolve the problem.
Good Luck,
Jim
Hallo, Jim,
Du meintest am 04.12.09:
I have a lot of problems with drug spam on my wiki
http://arktur.de/Wiki/Spezial:Logbuch/delete http://arktur.de/Wiki/Spezial:Logbuch/block
It seems to me that it might be less work if you moderated the creation of new accounts. I recently saw an extension, though I have not used it, that requires approval by an authorized person before a new account is created.
Looks good ...
Followed the "Setup" instructions:
Downloaded, put into .../Wiki/extensions
How can I run "ConfirmAccount.sql"? The file exists. (I'm no experienced MySQL user ...)
Added "require_once ..."
How can I run "maintenance/update.php"? The file exists. I cannot run "php" on the Wiki server, and
http://arktur.de/Wiki/maintenance/update.php
leads to "403: forbidden".
Viele Gruesse! Helmut
I have a lot of problems with drug spam on my wiki
http://arktur.de/Wiki/Spezial:Logbuch/delete http://arktur.de/Wiki/Spezial:Logbuch/blockIt seems to me that it might be less work if you moderated the creation of new accounts. I recently saw an extension, though I have not used it, that requires approval by an authorized person before a new account is created.
Looks good ...
Followed the "Setup" instructions:
Downloaded, put into .../Wiki/extensions
How can I run "ConfirmAccount.sql"? The file exists. (I'm no experienced MySQL user ...)
Added "require_once ..."
How can I run "maintenance/update.php"? The file exists. I cannot run "php" on the Wiki server, and
http://arktur.de/Wiki/maintenance/update.phpleads to "403: forbidden".
Over on the Openoffice.org Wiki, we have similar spam issues.... I've pretty much completely stopped it (a few still leak through, but it's around 1 or 2 every few months rather than hourly as it was before I made the changes to stop it) with a combination of MedaiWiki options and Extensions.
The MedaiWiki options you can play with to limit spammers are:
# Require users log in to edit $wgGroupPermissions['*']['edit'] = false;
This blocks anonymous edits.
# Editors must have a valid email address before # being allowed to edit wiki pages $wgEmailConfirmToEdit = true;
All users must have a valid email address and confirm by clicking a link in an email they receive from the Wiki
# Look for specific common spam words on page save, # and block if any found $wgSpamRegex = "/word1|word2|word3|word4/";
In the $wgSpamRegex array, just add your common spam words between the slashes with each word separated by a pipe. This is fairly effective for common spam words, but it requires that you keep up with the spammers and their word variations and misspellings. When a word in your word list is used in the content of any page being saved, the save is intercepted, blocked and a system message is shown saying that $word was used and to contact an admin if it's incorrectly blocking a real page save.
The extensions I installed there are:
http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:ReCAPTCHA which adds a Captcha on new user creation. It's a minor inconvenience to new users, but it adds one more hurdle to spammers.
http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:Bad_Behavior
This has probably been the number one most effective tool for blocking spammers, and so far after being in place about a year on the OOoWiki has not interfered once (that I am aware of) with regular users.
Each of these solutions by themselves are only partially effective, but the combination seems to be doing it's job, and I rarely ever have to block users or delete spam.
C.
Hallo, Clayton,
Du meintest am 05.12.09:
I have a lot of problems with drug spam on my wiki
http://arktur.de/Wiki/Spezial:Logbuch/delete http://arktur.de/Wiki/Spezial:Logbuch/block
[...]
The MediaWiki options you can play with to limit spammers are:
# Require users log in to edit $wgGroupPermissions['*']['edit'] = false;
This blocks anonymous edits.
That's another problem. In my case the spammer first creates a user account (included the confirmation). And he uses this account for editing the user page.
# Editors must have a valid email address before # being allowed to edit wiki pages $wgEmailConfirmToEdit = true;
All users must have a valid email address and confirm by clicking a link in an email they receive from the Wiki
My spammer seems to use valid and confirmed addresses.
# Look for specific common spam words on page save, # and block if any found $wgSpamRegex = "/word1|word2|word3|word4/";
In the $wgSpamRegex array, just add your common spam words between the slashes with each word separated by a pipe.
Maybe I'll add this test - not only this drug spammer vandales.
The extensions I installed there are:
http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:ReCAPTCHA which adds a Captcha on new user creation. It's a minor inconvenience to new users, but it adds one more hurdle to spammers.
I've just installed "ConfirmEdit", seems to work as desired.
I'll take a look at it - thank you!
Viele Gruesse! Helmut
Hallo, Jim,
Du meintest am 04.12.09:
I have a lot of problems with drug spam on my wiki
http://arktur.de/Wiki/Spezial:Logbuch/delete http://arktur.de/Wiki/Spezial:Logbuch/block
It seems to me that it might be less work if you moderated the creation of new accounts. I recently saw an extension, though I have not used it, that requires approval by an authorized person before a new account is created.
I'd like to use this extension, but I have a small problem ...
Under "Setup" I find
Run "ConfirmAccount.sql"
But how have I to run this script? I know the name of the db, I know the username and the passwd of the (most privileged) db administrator, the db uses "mysql". I'm no SQL specialist, I fear to damage the db with my tries.
Which command have I to type (yes - pure CLI) to run the script?
Viele Gruesse! Helmut
Helmut Hullen wrote:
I'd like to use this extension, but I have a small problem ...
Under "Setup" I find
Run "ConfirmAccount.sql"
But how have I to run this script? I know the name of the db, I know the username and the passwd of the (most privileged) db administrator, the db uses "mysql". I'm no SQL specialist, I fear to damage the db with my tries.
Which command have I to type (yes - pure CLI) to run the script?
Viele Gruesse! Helmut
mysql $DATABASE -u $DBUSER -p < ConfirmAccount.sql
On Tue, Dec 8, 2009 at 10:09 AM, Platonides Platonides@gmail.com wrote:
Helmut Hullen wrote:
I'd like to use this extension, but I have a small problem ...
Under "Setup" I find
Run "ConfirmAccount.sql"
But how have I to run this script? I know the name of the db, I know the username and the passwd of the (most privileged) db administrator, the db uses "mysql". I'm no SQL specialist, I fear to damage the db with my tries.
Which command have I to type (yes - pure CLI) to run the script?
Viele Gruesse! Helmut
mysql $DATABASE -u $DBUSER -p < ConfirmAccount.sql
MediaWiki-l mailing list MediaWiki-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/mediawiki-l
Of course renaming the tables too if you're using a prefix for your table names in Mediawiki.
-Chad
Hallo, Platonides,
Du meintest am 08.12.09:
I'd like to use this extension, but I have a small problem ...
Under "Setup" I find
Run "ConfirmAccount.sql"
But how have I to run this script?
mysql $DATABASE -u $DBUSER -p < ConfirmAccount.sql
Thank you - it's really simple. Ok - I had to add "-h $Host" (phpMyAdmin showed it ...).
Viele Gruesse! Helmut
Install http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:TitleBlacklist It allows you to set words that cannot appear in page titles, and also words that are not allowed in account names. So you would ban all the words they are using for their accounts, since who would use "No Prescrition" for their account name?
Hallo, Platonides,
Du meintest am 05.12.09:
Install http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:TitleBlacklist It allows you to set words that cannot appear in page titles, and also words that are not allowed in account names.
Seems to work as desired - thank you!
I've taken
http://de.wikiversity.org/wiki/MediaWiki:Titleblacklist
as a template, (the last definitions may do the job). And there I found "<newaccountonly>" (and testet it): works well for/ against my drug spammer.
Viele Gruesse! Helmut
mediawiki-l@lists.wikimedia.org