mahara-contributors team mailing list archive

[Aaron Wells <1250641@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

I've been told by Kristina that there have been previous attempts to
curb the mahara.org forum spam, and the current approach of just
manually deleting the messages was the best that could be done. I'll ask
her for some more details about why the other approaches didn't work, so
I can make sure I don't go down those same blind alleys.

The spam tends to be 1-3 messages posted from a newly registered
account. Our account registration system does use Mahara's anti-spam
functions, but these only block the simplest of automated attacks and
could be circumvented by a slightly more targeted script. Previous
investigations into the spamming apparently indicate that the spam is
being posted by human beings, though.

Currently we just delete the spam messages and suspend the user accounts
as they are found. However, this has the downside that by the time we
notice the message, the email about it has already gone out to all forum
subscribers.

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https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/1250641

Title:
  mahara.org forum spam

Status in Mahara ePortfolio:
  Confirmed

Bug description:
  Mahara gets a steady annoying flow of forum spam. On a typical day
  it's 5 to 10 messages. This isn't a whole lot, but since the number of
  messages on mahara.org's forums is fairly low, this makes up about 40%
  of the messages each day.

  I'm opening this bug to explore options to deal with this issue.

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