Watch out for these jokers. They have spammed me in the past, but last night I got hit by over 400 junk submissions. They all went straight in the bin. IPs I have banned so far: 217.149.209.45 62.75.222.179 66.45.252.146 69.72.158.218 69.73.175.26 69.90.153.223 All submissions are similar: Name: JohnDoe Category: Internet Website name: The best homepage, or the URL Description: The homepage of [TITLE] Keywords: The best homepage I assume people are paying them to submit to directories. Don't. You are wasting your money. No human editor is going to add hundreds of sites with the same description, and it will do your site little good as well. Pay someone who manually submits to directories instead.
And there are plenty more where thye come from. I have copied your info onto http://spambank.blogspot.com/2005/04/spam-bank.html Sarah
Here's the list of blocked IP's from my directory: 61.11.57.241 62.103.77.156 62.253.219.130 68.71.148.66 69.50.170.210 69.57.158.73 70.242.4.90 80.33.108.107 80.34.56.70 80.58.3.235 80.58.9.111 80.58.35.107 80.58.51.170 80.59.189.28 85.160.27.249 85.160.51.86 148.244.150.57 200.62.146.126 200.168.18.67 202.125.143.30 203.113.160.235 203.160.1.68 203.160.1.75 203.162.3.77 203.162.3.146 203.162.3.147 203.162.3.148 203.162.152.125 203.210.222.36 210.245.117.117 212.0.128.2 212.0.138.14 217.126.111.25 NukeGallery also has a huge list of spammer IP's - in the thousands. http://www.nukedgallery.net I think you have to register to post the IP's.
Ps. The only problem with blocking IP's is that many users may have the same IP address - so it doesn't always benefit to block IP's unless they are serious spammers as was the case with egdcltd's experience.
setup your directory to only allow access to the add-site pages from links within your own site. That will help reduce the spam considerably.
Good point - since I implemented that on my site it reduced the amount of junk submissions. It also prevents others linking directly to your submission form and by-passing your submission policy. You can easily spot people who have taken the time to read how a submission should be submitted and those who try to wing it.
Yeah, I was hit by some spammers also. Posted a warning here and got a stupid lame comment saying that I should apply to be an editor at DMOZ...
Many directories also use an image verification (containing letters and numbers) that must be input before the submission will be accepted. I do not know how successful these are, but they must cut down the spam somewhat.
Fryman you should delete your offensive post. We are not spammers. 50 links on your directory would give you 10 more pages and this is what you wanted (sitepoint), whereas the links (if accepted) would only split the same pr transfer (which is extremly low anyway) into many parts, making each much lower. Those 50 urls would only get their own pr's activated. I was thinking pr is easy to understand, but looks like not the case for everyone. We get dozens of links everyday without applying for them.
silencer, yea, you beat me to it. On a friend's blog we used to see ~500 spam comments a day, put in a simple 3 digit code to be entered to comment, and it dropped to nothing. Usually they don't have the intelligence, or they don't want to waste the time trying to mess with image generators. Definitely worth it, and banning IPs really won't help that much, there's so many proxies and dynamic ips out there, plus you don't want to ban legitimate traffic. Before we did the # thing, we had a huge regex list, and tons of IPs banned, it didn't do any good. =)
Our site uses image verification and i can say that it has completely blocked spam submissions by auto submission programs.
cant you add to your directory a script that will reject submission from the same IP in the same day? A lot of webhosts has this anti-auto submision tool installed on theirs servers.
Anything's possible! Here's what you will need to do: 1. Record the IP address for each submission (In New Zealand due to privacy laws, it's better to include a note on the submission page next to the submit button that explains that the IP address will be recorded). Also record the timestamp of when it was submitted. 2. With each submission, search the database for that IP. If found, compare the time stamps and away you go. But, there is a problem with this. What if I want to submit both my websites to your directory?? Do you really think I will return after 24 hours to submit my second site. What if I own 5 sites?? 20?? So, I think imo there are heaps of other ways to fight spam. I am currently using email verification and a reciprocal link for this. Moreover, the recip link is automatically verfied and has to be on the same site that is being submitted. So far, it's been working quite well. I do get submissions that I have to delete, but these are usually porn or hate sites or websites that use unethical linking practices. In fact, I just banned a website that was using the rel=nofollow tag to link to their "link partners" page. What a load of rubbish! I hate people who try to rip you off and try and grow by using unethical practices.
This is a bad idea... more and more people are turning off the referal info at the browser level (for whatever reasons)... You'll be stopping regular users submitting sites
Most regular users don't even know what a http_referrer is. More and more people aren't turning it off - it's just that more and more people are using badly configured firewalls. There is no reason why people shouldn't allow http_referrer - if it's turned off/blocked, then as far as I'm concerned you're trying to hide something. With it off, my thoughts are: What are you trying to hide ? Why don't you want me to know how you got to my site ?
A lot of people use software to work the autosubmissions, so anything you can use to reduce the ability for software to submit details, without affecting the human user experience, should be helpful.
Agree completely especially on image verification routines...actually, seeing an image verification routine on the directory submission form leaves an impression of quality directory on me every time I see one. (Verification routine = less spammers, quicker addition of quality directories and quicker turnaround time for my site, and my site being in a companion of mostly quality hand-submitted sites).