Captcha for Weblinks search function

Posted: Mon Aug 13, 2007 5:34 pm

I believe I´m not the only one with these strange search queries in weblinks.
I already banned some of them using NukeSentinels string blocker but thats not a real solution and I´m a bit tired to track and find still such entries like I had before in a non patched version.
Thats one of the latest I`´ve banned:

User Agent: SmallProxy 3.2 Beta 13
Query String: www.site.de/modules.php?name=Web_Links&l_op=search&query=
Get String: www.mysite.de/modules.php?name=Web_Links&l_op=search&query=
Post String: www.mysite.de/modules.php?query=docking stations for nokia cellular phones&Mitglied=Suche

So what about a Captcha for the search function in weblinks ?
Maybe it´s also a good idea to have a Captcha in other modules with search function too.

registered · Posted: Tue Aug 14, 2007 6:40 am

It is so stupid that these people just blast any old nuke site they can find! There is no value to doing what they are doing unless you made referrers somehow made visible on your site. No-one in their right minds any longer are going to do that.

Personally, I would give consideration to banning the User Agent, or better yet, using .htaccess to do so.

Not sure I like the idea of making it more difficult for users to perform searches on my site. This type of "spam" is pretty worthless and requires no "clean-up" right? So, do you really want to annoy your real users that much by putting a captcha on a "read-only" search / query?

JMO

Posted: Tue Aug 14, 2007 8:14 am

Many boards have implented already a captcha into the search function of forums so I asked me why not also for weblinks ?
However, I need to recheck some rules of my .htaccess.

Posted: Wed Aug 15, 2007 5:43 am

Well, I guess it could be done, but I would then want to extend the granularity of the spam captcha within RavenNuke so that the admin would have the option to have the captcha for the rating comments, but maybe turn it off for just the search.