[Imc-web] [UCIMC-Tech] Captchas MIA

Sun May 1 19:17:35 CDT 2011

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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