[Mediawiki-l] blocking drug spam

[Jake Ford]

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 at debatrix.org
615.418.3858
www.debatrix.org

-----Original Message-----
From: Helmut Hullen [mailto:Hullen at t-online.de] 
Sent: Friday, December 04, 2009 3:37 PM
To: mediawiki-l at 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

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