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Re: [OCLUG-Tech] How to stop spammers

On Sat, Sep 26, 2009 at 10:09:28PM -0400, Eric Brackenbury wrote:
> Hi Brenda
> 
> On Sat, Sep 26, 2009 at 9:36 PM, Brenda J. Butler <bjb [ at ] linuxbutler [ dot ] ca>wrote:
> 
> > On Sat, Sep 26, 2009 at 04:30:03PM -0400, Eric Brackenbury wrote:
> > > Hi Folks
> > >
> > > I know this is not a Linux specific question but if anyone can help  :-))
> > >
> > > OK so I moderate a Yahoo group and lately there has been a person who
> > just
> > > uses a new email address every time they get banned.
> >
> > Is this an automated spammer, or a manual one?
> 
> 
> How do I tell?

They spam faster than you can clean.  And they can't answer captcha
questions correctly.

>  If automated,
> > you might have success with requiring that posters decipher
> > a captcha image for each new post.
> >
> 
> So whats a captcha image, sorry I am not up to speed on this stuff

It's a picture of a distorted word.  People who want to post
to your site have to type in the word.  The word is distorted
in such a way that optical character recognition on the word
will produce the wrong word, or no word.

It's a way of telling whether a real person is responding to
your web page.  See:  http://xkcd.net/632 and
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Captcha

I haven't run any Yahoo groups, so I don't really know how you
would do this with a Yahoo group, sorry.

> > If not, then perhaps go to moderated posts for a while.
> >
> 
> Yes could do especially this time of year with lower group activity.
> Thanks

Good luck ...

bjb

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