A Perl script protects forums against spam
SPAM STOPPER
Spammers don’t just send email. They exploit discussion forums and blogs, posting pseudo-messages full of links to dupe search engines. A Perl script cleans up the mess.
My own small discussion forum on perlmeister. com has attracted too much attention from link spammers recently. These parasites of the Web target their bots at popular forum software tools such as phpBB or blog applications such as Wordpress, bombarding them with postings that contain very little aside from links to poker and sex pages. Spammers try to lure forum visitors into clicking on their sponsors’ websites, and they are trying to dupe the major search engines that rate the importance of a page based on the links pointing to it. Spanner in the Spambot’s Works What is known as comment spam [2] can be reduced by restricting postings to registered users. But this obstacle is also likely to frighten off legitimate users who have qualms about privacy issues. And moderating every posting before it appears on the website may keep the spammers out, but the effort required for these checks is immense – not to mention the unavoidable delays that hamstring any discussion.
Buy this article as PDF
(incl. VAT)
Buy Linux Magazine
US / Canada
UK / Australia
Subscribe to our Linux Newsletters
Find Linux and Open Source Jobs
Subscribe to our ADMIN Newsletters
Support Our Work
Linux Magazine content is made possible with support from readers like you. Please consider contributing when you’ve found an article to be beneficial.
News
-
Linux Mint 20 Reaches EOL
With Linux Mint 20 at its end of life, the time has arrived to upgrade to Linux Mint 22.
-
TuxCare Announces Support for AlmaLinux 9.2
Thanks to TuxCare, AlmaLinux 9.2 (and soon version 9.6) now enjoys years of ongoing patching and compliance.
-
Go-Based Botnet Attacking IoT Devices
Using an SSH credential brute-force attack, the Go-based PumaBot is exploiting IoT devices everywhere.
-
Plasma 6.5 Promises Better Memory Optimization
With the stable Plasma 6.4 on the horizon, KDE has a few new tricks up its sleeve for Plasma 6.5.
-
KaOS 2025.05 Officially Qt5 Free
If you're a fan of independent Linux distributions, the team behind KaOS is proud to announce the latest iteration that includes kernel 6.14 and KDE's Plasma 6.3.5.
-
Linux Kernel 6.15 Now Available
The latest Linux kernel is now available with several new features/improvements and the usual bug fixes.
-
Microsoft Makes Surprising WSL Announcement
In a move that might surprise some users, Microsoft has made Windows Subsystem for Linux open source.
-
Red Hat Releases RHEL 10 Early
Red Hat quietly rolled out the official release of RHEL 10.0 a bit early.
-
openSUSE Joins End of 10
openSUSE has decided to not only join the End of 10 movement but it also will no longer support the Deepin Desktop Environment.
-
New Version of Flatpak Released
Flatpak 1.16.1 is now available as the latest, stable version with various improvements.