Rick's b.log - entry 2010/11/27

b.log abuse

  2010/11/27 09:25:49  ?=20080621  183.17.47.28  http[...]/index.php?diary=00000000
  2010/11/27 09:25:49  ?=20080622  183.17.47.28  http[...]/index.php?diary=00000000
  2010/11/27 09:25:50  ?=20080627  183.17.47.28  http[...]/index.php?diary=00000000
  2010/11/27 09:25:50  ?=20080629  183.17.47.28  http[...]/index.php?diary=00000000
  2010/11/27 09:25:51  ?=20080630  183.17.47.28  http[...]/index.php?diary=00000000
  2010/11/27 09:25:51  ?=20080702  183.17.47.28  http[...]/index.php?diary=00000000
  2010/11/27 09:25:51  ?=20080704  183.17.47.28  http[...]/index.php?diary=00000000
  2010/11/27 09:25:52  ?=20080705  183.17.47.28  http[...]/index.php?diary=00000000
  2010/11/27 09:25:52  ?=20080706  183.17.47.28  http[...]/index.php?diary=00000000

I am not going to say exactly how my algorithm will be implemented, suffice to say it is a factor of how much time has elapsed since a specific IP address last requested something. The idea is to trap 'bots that behave in a method similar to the above, but it may well catch out those who use my search and then try to "open in new tab" on everything of interest. Or, alternatively, those who want to wget everything.
It will be sad if the trigger happens for "open in new tab", but I'm in two minds regarding wget. While I am not overly bothered by people taking the content to read offline (for the stupid, this means personal private use permitted, not a giveaway of copyrights), I don't appreciate if you clobber my server in order to achieve this.

Therefore, if you are a wgetter, please may I suggest:

I will also be making modifications to my expiry settings - again to try to reduce 'bot behaviour. With the notable exceptions of the GoogleBot and Bing!bot - because in my experience these 'bots are well behaved.

Why am I doing this? I don't need to worry about bandwidth right now, but if my site moves in the future, bandwidth may become a factor. I think seeing automatic "allocation exceeded" messages due to some greedy asses helps nobody, and I'm sure as hell not going to cough up extra cash so Chinese and Russian 'bots can snarf my content at regular intervals. So I'm going to get a little more militant here. I welcome blinking thinking visitors. And be-my-boyfriend requests from cute Japanese girls (non-smoker, please!). I don't welcome scapers and scavengers.

Recaptcha

Recaptcha [update 2010/11/28]

Your comments:

Please note that while I check this page every so often, I am not able to control what users write; therefore I disclaim all liability for unpleasant and/or infringing and/or defamatory material. Undesired content will be removed as soon as it is noticed. By leaving a comment, you agree not to post material that is illegal or in bad taste, and you should be aware that the time and your IP address are both recorded, should it be necessary to find out who you are. Oh, and don't bother trying to inline HTML. I'm not that stupid! ☺ ADDING COMMENTS DOES NOT WORK IF READING TRANSLATED VERSIONS.
 
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Rob, 27th November 2010, 21:23

I often see those captchas with random bits of punctuation after the words. In wonder some times if they have slurped some large document to get the selection, and forgotten to ignore it all.

Rick, 28th November 2010, 00:55

I read somewhere ages ago that the original concept of the recaptcha was to take scanned documents, pull out the words, and offer munged ones up for recaptcha. The first few times a word was offered, anything would be accepted, and once the system had a majority vote on what the word was, it would be distorted more and then you'd need to enter the correct word.  Keeping track of all of this permitted a giant distributed form of human character recognition to be implemented. I guess they had to be careful for the quality of the input, for nobody would appreciate captchas like "rape child" or "bishop motherf***er". For that matter, what is "avrequen"? It's stumped Google, it doesn't appear to be a place, nor a word in Spanish or French. So....?

Mick, 9th December 2010, 23:16

1. Are you sure you've banned most of China?  Country: CHINA  # ISO Code: CN  # Total Networks: 1,818  # Total Subnets: 267,237,376    Would you like me to email you the deny list?? Your .htaccess file will swell!    I also hate these darned boxes with completely grabled letters. Have you had the option to listen to and type in the spoken word yet? I forget where I stumbled upon this but imagine a computer voice saying something without any programming of how to pronounce or punctuate the word and you are half way there. Superior Software Speech was far clearer as we humans spelt things 'rong' to get it ta talk propa like eye duz :-@

Rick, 11th December 2010, 16:11

I have not banned China because I don't have much .htaccess control - shame, as passwording folders would be useful too for beta releases and such. Nevermind, I'd just block on IP fragments. And yes, I know there are many, but most of my nastiness seems to originate from either Shanghai or Sezchuan (or however you spell that).    I have not tried the spoken captchas, but I have seen a few with the ability to speak, no doubt as a result of the American disability legislation (see above "Get an audio challenge"). I always wondered, in the case of separate letters or numbers (as opposed to words like above), if it wouldn't be possible to have a computer 'learn' the combinations spoken?    Ahhh... Superior Speech. ;-) Have you heard Microsoft's Sam yet?

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