Jun
12
(2006)
I've been running this blog on Drupal for a while now, and am generally quite happy with it. The one thing I'd been missing from my days powered by WordPress was a transparent and effective spam blocker. I was so totally spoiled by Spam Karma 2 that everything else just seems like a kid's toy in comparison.
I'd installed the Spam module shortly after I switched to Drupal, but it never seemed to actually block spam. It is pretty handy at removing it, but the URL and keyword matches didn't seem to actually stop spam.
Then, this morning, some spamass decided it would be fun to point his (I'm assuming this jerk is a guy) spambots at my blog. The spam was consistently getting past Spam.module, but it was pretty easy to clean up after the jerk. Still, it's no fun playing mop-up after a cretinous script kiddie, so I rolled up my sleeves to see if I could duct tape a better solution together.
Thankfully, the work had already been done for me, just not updated to Drupal 4.7. The Spam.module for 4.6 ships with a Spam URI Realtime Blocklist module, which will check incoming comments with 6 different realtime-updated shared lists of known spammers.
So, I fired up the Form Updater module, converted the spam_surbl.module code to 4.7, and deployed it. It seems to work so far - of course I'm jynxing it now… I've attached my hack update of spam_surbl.module, which I'm using on Drupal 4.7 here. I'll send a copy to the developer of Spam.module in case he wants to include an updated blocklist module (I didn't convert the .mysql file to an .install autoinstaller, so you may need to run that manually to get the module ready).
See also: Akismet module for Drupal. Hopefully will be on Drupal.org itself at some point.
Boris - thanks for the link! I hadn’t seen that final version - looks like it just went to 1.0 today! I’ve tried switching over to it to see how it works out.
I've been using Bad Behavior since I upgraded to 4.7 and it's stopped all comment spam before it could be posted. I had to fine-tune it a bit because it was blocking some legitimate users, but now it's working great. I see at least 10 spam attempts a day trying to do something like /node/reply/nnnn but it cacthes all of them.
I’d tried Bad Behavior on my WordPress blog, and on a MediaWiki site. It managed to block me out along with the spammers. Pretty bulletproof protection
I might play with BB on a test site to see if I can get it behaving better…
Akismet seems to be doing you good !
So far so good. Appears to have caught a rather large 68-comment volley early this morning, with only one sneaking through. That was easy to nuke. The module still needs a little tweakage in the UI, but it’s totally usable and does a great job.
Thanks again Darcy!
this module promises alot after the spam module disappointment
pretty sure that spam module has been upgraded to 4.7
However, I am getting some weird and potentially worrying glitches, such as a spam cron job deleting comments…that I hadn't even realised were marked as spam…
ah well, more work to see if it is working
I hope you didn't disable Bad Behavior when you installed Akismet. That could explain all the spam problems you've been having. You're supposed to run them concurrently.Â
Michael - since this post was first written, I’ve switched to the Akismet + BadBehavior combo. I didn’t initially have BadBehavior installed - neither the Akismet nor Akismet.module pages mentioned anything about BadBehavior. I did turn it on at the recommendation of Mike (in the comments above), and have found the combo of BB+Akismet to be absolutely bulletproof. BB knocks down the obvious spam roaches, and Akismet gets the sneaky and less obvious ones. Between the two, I’ve got a flawless spam prevention and management solution that doesn’t add any noticeable load to the server. Akismet on its own was adding a significant load, as the spammers thought they were succeeding and just kept their bots pointed at me.
Thanks for BB, Michael! (and Matt for Akismet!)
I’m considering switching from WP to Drupal, and I am concerned about spam as well. So, would you say that the BB + Akismet is about as good as Spam Karma 2 on WP? Thanks!
I wouldn’t say it’s quite as good as Spam Karma 2 on WP - I’ve never seen anything work quite that well - but it’s pretty darned close. Spam is basically a non-issue. I’ve switched to BB + Spam.module because I didn’t like being at the mercy of an external service. It’s been 99+ % bulletproof (er, resistant?) so far.
I think there is a piece of code at aspdotnetatoms.com that you can attach into the site to stop the spam.