Blocking guestbook spam

Rondo · Post by **Rondo** » 27/06/2006 - 7:45

Anyone who's had a look at the guestbook at the Axes Denied website lately has probably noticed that we're currently having a pretty heavy problem with spam. Our current solution is to do a manual clean-up daily, which, frankly, isn't much of a solution, so we're looking for something more proactive to do. Anybody here know if there's some sort of spam filter add-on for Advanced Guestbook around? Or can you recommend a guestbook script with antispam functionality built in? Or do we just have to roll up our sleeves and code our own solution? Please, any input would be appreciated.

edit: It turns out that Advanced Guestbook does, in fact, have a captcha feature - we were just using an older version in which it wasn't implemented yet. I upgraded our guestbook to use the current version, and it's now been online for several hours without a single spam message coming through, which seems promising. So, problem solved, for now at any rate. Cheers to everyone who offered their help!

the_JinX · Post by **the_JinX** » 27/06/2006 - 8:44

I don't know about the kind of guestbook software you use..
But most modern ones have a Captcha possibility..

The famous type the letters and numbers you see in this box kind of thing..
If it's not to hard a guestbook system you could possibly add it yourself..

Post by **C64GLeN** » 27/06/2006 - 9:32

I've had this problem with a couple of the sites I run.

I resolved it by writing a bit of php the validates the users email address and checks the main text for any keywords (Viagra for instance)

Rondo · Post by **Rondo** » 27/06/2006 - 9:43

the_JinX wrote:I don't know about the kind of guestbook software you use..
But most modern ones have a Captcha possibility..

I was thinking along those lines myself. The script we're using at the moment does not seem to support that, and we'd really rather not get our hands dirty with PHP if we can quickly deploy something that's been tried and tested, so I guess we'll just find a better script - I've already located a few promising ones at the PHP Resource Index. Hopefully it won't be too much of a chore to port the messages from our old guestbook to the new one.

the_JinX · Post by **the_JinX** » 27/06/2006 - 9:55

One thing that also helps is making the script less common..
These spambots use searchengines with terms like crapguestbook 0.2.1 and the likes to find systems they can easilly spam..

As long as your guestbook uses for example different id's for the form fields you should be safe from those..

I wonder how long till they have real people do the spamming in some 3rd world country for 10 euro's a month..

Pex `Mahoney` Tufvesson · Post by **Pex `Mahoney` Tufvesson** » 27/06/2006 - 11:47

Spambots hardly ever handle JavaScript. So, if you're into coding the guestbook yourself, put a "hidden value" in the form which automatically gets filled in by JavaScript. This stops the bots, but unfortunately stops non-JavaScript users as well (but there aren't too many of them!)... anyway, it works for me!

Good luck!