Spam Patrol

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Report inappropriate posts here Talk:Spam Patrol
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Contents

Usage

Spam detection, removal, and reporting

Many of these instructions require an administrator/sysop account
  • Watch Recent changes
  • Tip: Use RSS feed from Recent changes page to review changes quickly
  • Look for spam indications, see #Spammer_modus_operandi
  • Look at page history, compare versions, undo or rollback spam to last good post
  • If undo or rollback is not an option, use edit to remove spam
  • If a page is getting spammed frequently by anonymous users, block anonymous users for that page for a finite period
  • Block anonymous spammers for infinity
  • Regular users should login to make new posts easier to monitor
  • Report spam removal
date - spam posts removed - pages affected - keyword
2008-08-31 - removed 1 spam post - [[Spam Patrol]] - keyword: example-domain.net

Spam filter requests

Note: If a domain is blocked in the blacklist, a specific URL can be unblocked in the whitelist

Trends

Recent reports

Post in reverse chronology - most recent at top
  • 2009-01-05 - no new spam
  • 2008-12-28 - removed one spam post
  • 2008-12-26 - removed one spam post
  • 2008-12-04 - removed one spam post, keyword: Brainpulse
  • 2008-12-02 - removed one spam post

Previous reports

  • 2008-11-23 - removed one spam post and blocked 5 domain names
  • 2008-11-22 - rolled back changes to Scientology telephone number and URL which redirected visitor to hostile web site. See User talk:FredricLRice
  • 2008-11-14 - removed one spam post and blocked 5 domain names
  • 2008-11-12 - removed one spam post and blocked 5 domain names
  • 2008-11-10 - removed two spam posts and blocked 8 domain names
  • 2008-11-08 - removed gibberish from Blogs and blocked user
  • 2008-09-18 - deleted gibberish page and removed gibberish from another page - blocked to anonymous users
  • 2008-09-18 - deleted spam page Category:Forum/w/index.php - blocked spammer - added netfirms.com to MediaWiki:Spam-blacklist
  • 2008-09-16 - removed spam from Government resources: Arkansas - added spam addresses to MediaWiki:Spam-blacklist - blocked spammer 89.149.253.14 --John 15:52, 16 September 2008 (CDT)
  • 2008-09-11 - Monitoring unregistered user for suspicious activity: Special:Contributions/205.144.50.1 --John
  • 2008-09-11 - Removed vandal page [[Hurricane Gustav Wiki:Current events]] and blocked IP 141.51.112.154 --John
  • 2008-09-10 - Vandalism reversed on Talk:Main Page --John
  • 2008-08-31 - No previous reports

SpamBlacklist Extension

Installation 

  require_once( "$IP/extensions/SpamBlacklist/SpamBlacklist.php" );
TEST: blacklist and whitelist on local machine: badspammer\.com and goodspammer\.com
TEST ERRATIC: http://badspammer.com/ works on discussion page but not here - seems to be context sensitive.
TEST WORKS: http://www.badspammer*com/ added to blacklist [DONE - JW]
TEST WORKS: http://www.goodspammer.com/ added to blacklist and whitelist [DONE - JW] - whitelist will be needed if/when global blacklists are added

Optional Global (External) Blacklists

  • Add optional links for files, database/title, or external blacklists to the array $wgSpamBlacklistFiles in LocalSettings.php 
 require_once( "$IP/extensions/SpamBlacklist/SpamBlacklist.php" );
 $wgSpamBlacklistFiles = array(
 // local blacklist file - optional
 //   "$IP/extensions/SpamBlacklist/local_blacklist", 
 //DB: database title - local wiki page tile = 'spam_blacklist' - optional and in addition to MediaWiki:Spam-blacklist
 //   "DB: wikidb spam_blacklist",   //   match wikidb to the value of $wgDBname in LocalSettings.php
 //Remote wiki blacklist - optional
 //   "http://meta.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Spam_blacklist&action=raw&sb_ver=1", // Wikimedia's list
 );

 TEST STATUS PENDING

Spammer modus operandi

  • Spammers use affiliate marketing to raise money.
  • Spammers target wikis to boost affiliate ranking on search engines. (see Spamdexing)
  • Spammers leave finger prints:
    • URLs they want indexed by search engines
    • For sale words: drugs, gambling & sex (what else is there?)
    • Markup unique to spammers, see next item.
  • Spambots frequently make wiki link lists invisible by enclosing them with DIV elements that have the style height attribute equal 1px. Therefore, you will not see the spam unless you view it with history/compare or view it in edit mode.
    • Some spambots make no attempt to hide links; use highly variable URLs; and use no key words to block, e.g. [http://blah98.yada24~info 44][http://blah99.yada25~info 45], etc. These spambots often trash the regular content by encoding <,>,& into HTML entities.
  • Wiki articles with direct links from the main page are high value targets for spammers, however, any editable wiki page is vulnerable. By setting your search preferences to include all namespaces, you can find the obscured spam locations using the search box.
  • The same spammer may revisit a page with different Usernames in rapid sequence to add more spam, limiting the rollback feature and requiring the cleanup to use edit/deletes.
  • Another spammer trick is to insert a URL somewhere in the body of an article using brackets only. e.g. [http://www.birth-control.freeservers-dot-com/] would appear as [1]
  • By removing spam from articles the spammers' needs are frustrated because the history pages which retain the spam have meta tags for robots which say noindex,nofollow and the spam is no longer indexed by search engines.
  • Hopefully, by removing spam quickly, spammers will see this wiki as a waste of time and they will go elsewhere to do their dirty deeds.
  • For more information about wiki spammers: [2][3][4]

See also

Retrieved from "http://www.hurricanewiki.org/wiki/Spam_Patrol"
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