How to battle spam in phpLD w/o Captcha?

Are there any solutions? I don't like using Captcha because it doesn't quite work and its annoying as hell. I've tried a security question that would be verified by jQuery, but its only made a dent in the amount of spam at best.

 

If phpld has features like activate email upon registration and you review before publish sites and articles submitted by users, then you should activate that and remove captcha.

 

Problem is most anti-spam things only defeat automated spam and only for as long as it takes folks to figure out a work-around. Dealing with spam is unfortunately just part of owning a directory.

You could probably kill a lot right from the queue...if the site title/keywords are really off from the category submitted to...it's generally spam.

 

As a basic question, is anyone aware of any solutions out there (not just phpLD) that does NOT use captcha AND does not require registration? I really don't know any. You can use things like Askimet and Botscout, but you still need to have some sort of "gate" to prevent the spam.

 

1) The jQuery drag and drop image thing.
2) Somehow verifying payment with PayPal before sending the info to database
3) Akisment would be nice too

 

But then you risk alienating customers who have a genuine problem with the payment after submitting, it happened to me recently and the customer emailed asking for a paypal address to complete the transaction. I think that was inconvenient enough for them without having to ask them to resubmit the site info.

 

Yes. I've heard a lot about Rob's Spam Mod. He hasn't been around for a while though.

 

It's a pity there's no active modders here now, in the 'heyday' you could always find somebody like Rob or Silkysmooth who you could trust with your logins and would provide a friendly and quality service at a fair price. I know Silky doesn't do phpld work anymore, not sure if Rob would if you pm'd him.

 

Rewrite all the text in the submit page, rewrite the url of the submit page and you will stop spammers from finding you.

 

Rob's has done most of the modifications on my sites. He's definitely reliable (probably the only person that i'd give full access to my servers)

 

I'm here Nima. Give me a call tonight around 9ish.

BTW, there is a suggestion I have for your directory homepage.

 

Basic Math won't eliminate it. It's not 100% fail proof. I did create a MOD that is.

 

Unfortunately, after Duval screwed me over, then stole my ideas and MODs, he proceeded to take it a step further and started to steal customization work from us MODers as well. Sad, but true.

I still do work, but more toward the ingenuitive(not a real word I know) side, as this is what I was best know for.

 

Good to see you back. will call you later tonight

 

Good to know Rob, I'm away know for a couple of weeks but will get in touch on my return.

 

I've found the captcha and charging; together are the most effective way in all but eliminating spam.

 

Okay confession time, i do over 10-20K directory subs a day on average mostly for my second/third tier link wheel sites and i am probably still a small fish.

Remove any footprints that might help guys like find your site when building lists. This includes any mention of your CMS, and any standard text that came with it embedded at submission pages.

A Good captcha like Recaptcha will help, but many of Link builders use services like DeathByCaptcha so it only costs few pennies to have someone fill in the captcha for us, simple cpatchs and text based math questions are a joke.

I am too tired to post links but there are captchas that require click/drag action and so far the way captcha solving services work they cant beat them.

But if i am going to spend my resources i woudn't knowingly "spam" with irrelevant links because webmasters aren't going to approve them anyway.

But at the end of the day, aneone who doesn't uses completely automated submission gig, can successively spam you with irrelevant links in wrong categories and stuff.

You can cutdown on most spam but you'd still have to moderate submissions frequently.

 

I've never tried it myself, but it would seem the solution is a bit of programming and the use of a custom field. Based on g_bot's comments (I've seen threads here, offering work for folks typing in Captchas), that a custom check box or radio button field would require a visit to the site. If the directory owner has a bit of programming skills, they could rotate the "correct" answer. Only if the submitter clicks and submits the correct answer will the submission actually be submitted.

 

I'm gonna implement the sliding jQuery spam filter code here and report back in a few weeks