mediawiki: prevent spam bots from signing up

phabricator-migrator · February 19, 2024, 5:54pm

Information

ID: 6
PHID: PHID-TASK-yh3c7zjcfmvs3bnnv3a3
Author: Patrick
Status at Migration Time: resolved
Priority at Migration Time: Normal

Description

~5 automated bot accounts per hour are being created in Whonix wiki.

See them in action:

See what (spam prevention) plugins are already installed:

Current captcha’s don’t stop them.
ConfirmEdit questy captcha doesn’t stop them.
E-mail verification doesn’t stop them.

TODO:

find a suited spam prevention plugin (Category:Spam management extensions - MediaWiki)
install it on whonix.org

Comments

Patrick

2014-11-23 18:44:51 UTC

Went through that list. (Category:Spam management extensions - MediaWiki) Most cannot be used for whonix.org wiki. Either they don’t apply to this issue (bad words, bad files) or we cannot use them (popular spam filters that are IP based and also ban Tor users) or they’re too weak.

Changed the questy captcha question just now (~18:20 UTC). Let’s see how long that works.

The ConfirmEdit module “Are You A Human” might work, but it would require manual merging and I don’t know if it would contact google (the demo does so for audio captcha).

If that ends up soon inside the spam bot, I got another idea. Maybe a “secret” questy captcha word for registration that only Whonix team members know. We give it to anyone we think is a human.

Last resort would be manual creation of accounts by wiki admins.

Patrick

2014-11-27 02:11:40 UTC