[UCIMC-Tech] Captchas MIA

Mon May 2 08:32:08 CDT 2011

Right on, I knew there was a good reason... Following the principles of
unity, check.

I did need to turn off anonymous posting temporarily when implementing this,
and I'll turn it back on when I get back to it later today.
Making sure the captchas are working is fine with me, and I think that
upgrading the site will also help out too.

I think there's momentum for a site redesign right now which is good, but at
the same time we'll upgrade the site framework itself.

Chris

On Sun, May 1, 2011 at 10:20 PM, Mike Lehman <rebelmike at earthlink.net>wrote:

>  Chris,
> Yes, there is a reason. Open publishing is required for IMCs as a matter of
> principle. So we need to have something that allows people to post and
> comment anonymously that goes straight to full view.
>
> I know virtually nothing about the backend, but that's the policy side of
> things. Lots of ways to interpret and implement this, however.
>
> Lots of things would be easier about editing would be far easier without
> anon publishing. However, I think it is something we've always been
> committed to. Such complexities are why I've been keeping notes and
> outlining what I need to present to those who want to help catch written
> policy up with empirical policy. There are several different ideas of how to
> deal with this in terms of how different IMCs have dealt with it, although
> I've done no surveys of the current status of how this is dealt with right
> now at various IMCs. Implementation has varied considerably for the user, so
> I suspect that the code is similarly diverse. Within the Principles of
> Unity, I think we're in a position to come up with something that will fit
> locally policy wise.
>
> That's a lot of work, though. We need to do it eventually, but that's more
> a matter of choice provided there's not a technical reason to do something
> sooner.
>
> You have the power as a Tech admin to decide if anon publishing needs to be
> shut down as an emergency measure. It's happened before, but a long time
> ago, so don't remember any details. Use your best judgment and we'll work
> through things if it turns out it needs to be less temporary than
> anticipated.
> Mike Lehman
>
>
> On 5/1/2011 7:17 PM, Chris Ritzo wrote:
>
> While attempting to configure the new spam module, I found that there is an
> issue with the way we are doing proxy caching which is causing issues with
> the way the module is supposed to work. More spam was coming through, so
> here's the actions I took:
> - disabled Mollom, re-enabled reCaptcha
> - disabled anonymous posting, at least temporarily- discussion following..
>
> I suspect that there is a reason we have allowed anonymous postings, and
> I'd like to hear what that reason is as a part of the discussion on
> revamping the website.
>
> My personal feeling is that I'm not sure it's really necessary to allow
> completely anonymous users to post to the site, essentially requiring us to
> monitor and control for spam like this. Since logged in users can change the
> "author" of the post to appear as anonymous, I suggest that we make it
> apparent that this can be done in the redesign, and require people to
> register on the website in order to post comments, stories, etc.
>
> Thoughts? -CR
>
> On Sun, May 1, 2011 at 6:09 PM, Chris Ritzo <chris.ritzo at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> I just changed the settings so all forms use mollom's captcha  not textual
>> analysis. let me know if the spam continues.
>>
>> Chris
>>
>>
>>  On Sun, May 1, 2011 at 5:22 PM, Mike Lehman <rebelmike at earthlink.net>wrote:
>>
>>>  With my set-up, when I'm not signed into my account I can see a link to
>>> the Mollom privacy policy, but do not see any actual captchas.
>>>
>>> Could be unrelated, but we're getting a bunch of mortgage spam over the
>>> last couple of hours.
>>>  Mike Lehman
>>>
>>>
>>> On 5/1/2011 3:33 PM, Chris Ritzo wrote:
>>>
>>> all:
>>> I've just switched the IMC site from the reCaptcha module to the Mollom
>>> module. All forms that are exposed to non-authenticated users should now be
>>> protected either by captchas or by Mollom's textual analysis.. For those
>>> monitoring posts, I'm hoping this reduces the amount of spam posts that you
>>> see. please confirm if you note this.
>>>
>>> Thanks,
>>> Chris
>>>
>>> On Fri, Apr 29, 2011 at 3:05 PM, Mike Lehman <rebelmike at earthlink.net>wrote:
>>>
>>>>  Found a little info that may be relevant.
>>>>
>>>> http://computerworld.co.nz/news.nsf/security/mozilla-patches-firefox-4-fixes-programming-bungle
>>>>
>>>> Seems one of the fixes in FF 4.0.1 was to deal with a MS issue with ASLR
>>>> in Vista and 7 that made them "making the flaw as exploitable on those
>>>> platforms as it would be on Windows XP or other platforms."
>>>>
>>>> Maybe when they fixed things in Vista and 7, they broke cpatchas in XP?
>>>> Just speculation, but since many things funky lead back to MS, this wouldn't
>>>> surprise me.
>>>>  Mike Lehman
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> On 4/29/2011 1:32 PM, Mike Lehman wrote:
>>>>
>>>> Chris,
>>>> More info. I tried a test post on my other machine. Entered the
>>>> displayed captcha, hit Save and -- then it gave me an error message and no
>>>> longer displayed any captcha. Now that I've seen it twice, it was the same
>>>> thing that happened the first time a couple of days ago, as I was trying a
>>>> test post then, too.
>>>>
>>>> You can sign in and out of your account, everything's fine there, but
>>>> you never get the captchas back so that it's possible to post when not
>>>> logged in.
>>>>
>>>> My guess now is that this is an issue with Firefox. It's actually
>>>> Firefox 4.0.1 that I'm running on both machines.
>>>> Mike Lehman
>>>>
>>>> On 4/29/2011 11:05 AM, Chris Ritzo wrote:
>>>>
>>>> Thanks for documenting your troubleshooting Mike. I haven't had a chance
>>>> to look into this yet, and it appears that the issue is inconsistent. I've
>>>> had good results using the Mollom module for captchas on other sites and I'm
>>>> thinking of just switching the IMC site to that. It uses a web service to do
>>>> the captchas and will also do textual analysis on fields which is an added
>>>> layer of spam protection.
>>>>
>>>> Chris
>>>>
>>>> On Fri, Apr 29, 2011 at 10:29 AM, Mike Lehman <rebelmike at earthlink.net>wrote:
>>>>
>>>>> After some poking around...
>>>>>
>>>>> Still no captchas on my usual machine, even after several reboots. On
>>>>> my laptop, captchas are there. Both machines are running XP SP3 and the
>>>>> latest version of Firefox (4.0), so not sure why they just went MIA on the
>>>>> one.
>>>>>
>>>>> And the captchas seem to be there for others, as we've had some of the
>>>>> usual spam and one legitimate post since I first noticed the problem.
>>>>>
>>>>> This seemed superficially similar to the issue we've had several times
>>>>> lately where someone accidentally turned captchas off. Chris indicated that
>>>>> he'd reset that the last time it happened and remove it from the editor's
>>>>> menu so it couldn't happen again. However, that doesn't seem to be the case
>>>>> here, as I can get captchas on my alternate machine.
>>>>>
>>>>> I realize that this may just be my problem, but wanted to document it
>>>>> in case someone else runs into the same issue. I made no changes in settings
>>>>> AFAIK before this happened.
>>>>> Mike
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> On 4/27/2011 5:44 PM, Mike Lehman wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>>>  Sometime today, the captchas disappeared from the website.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Mike Lehman
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