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I've found Evercookie to be really useful in eliminating spam. Despite having captchas and per user send limits on my site, Nigerians were submitting tons of f

I've found Evercookie to be really useful in eliminating spam. Despite having captchas and per user send limits on my site, Nigerians were submitting tons of forms through my site a while back trying to trick users with the same scams that are popular on Craigslist. They know to clear their cookies, etc. Adding Evercookie cut down on the number of spam messages considerably just by keeping a count of the number of messages sent from a particular computer and blocking messages after more than a certain number per day. Perhaps most satisfying, I implemented it so the message appeared to have been sent successfully even when it was blocked. So there are Nigerians happily working away all day "sending" message on my site still thinking it is working. I sometimes get hundreds of blocked message notifications per day.

smokinn 16y ago
If you're already implementing messages like that another fun thing to do when the person goes way past the threshold is start making the site slow/buggy. Add in random sleeps, redirect to a random valid or error page, etc. Basically make the site increasingly buggy. The added benefit is that is breaks any automated scripts people might be scamming with. That's what I did when we marked an account as obvious spam. Usually that was when an account was created and the same or next day sent 1000+ messages to random other users. Basically the person using the account would think the messages got sent but really they usually hit either a keyword/bayes moderation or a similarity throttle and the messages were put into a moderation queue rather than delivered immediately. Once the moderator picks "obvious spam", for that account the site gets buggier and buggier for 30 days until the account gets completely shut down and the person can't log in with it anymore. I did that for 30 days because I didn't want to warn them their account had been flagged and just have them create a new one. Basically it's a spammer tarpit.

smokinn 16y ago

If you're already implementing messages like that another fun thing to do when the person goes way past the threshold is start making the site slow/buggy. Add in random sleeps, redirect to a random valid or error page, etc. Basically make the site increasingly buggy. The added benefit is that is breaks any automated scripts people might be scamming with. That's what I did when we marked an account as obvious spam. Usually that was when an account was created and the same or next day sent 1000+ messages to random other users. Basically the person using the account would think the messages got sent but really they usually hit either a keyword/bayes moderation or a similarity throttle and the messages were put into a moderation queue rather than delivered immediately. Once the moderator picks "obvious spam", for that account the site gets buggier and buggier for 30 days until the account gets completely shut down and the person can't log in with it anymore. I did that for 30 days because I didn't want to warn them their account had been flagged and just have them create a new one. Basically it's a spammer tarpit.