Easy way to stop bots from trying to spam my guestbook?

RickJ · #1 May 16, 2006, 07:59 AM

OK, I know I can install something like this, but I really don't want to install anything.

Check out what this guy is doing at the bottom of his page:
Franklin Acquisition Advisors

I love that!

Anyone know how to do it? I'm using dreamweaver, and find that if I assign a value to that field, then if a user puts the wrong value in, but retries, the submission goes through.

Nez · May 16, 2006, 08:17 AM

If you are an automated machine,please find the answer to the 27th letter of the alphabet before replieing.

No,sorry,I can't do it...but maybe Curlyben,or Scott can?

Curlyben · May 16, 2006, 09:50 AM

I do like what they have done here:

How about just ripping the code and installing it for yourself ?

This may also be helpful

RickJ · May 16, 2006, 11:20 AM

The one you refer to does not actually work. I entered pineapple and it took! It appears the guy is probably receiving emails from that page (like I am).

My guestbook form info comes to me by email so I want to stop the submissions. They're flooding my inbox to the tune of 20 a day.

LTheobald · May 17, 2006, 03:27 AM

There's plenty of ways to do it.

First is like the random question. Easy enough to do with a bit of PHP or ASP. There's also the way where you have to type in the text displayed in an image.

If you are running this site on a Linux/Unix box, you can block bots using .htaccess files: Scripts: Spider Blocking :: .htaccess, PHP, Block Bad Bots with .htaccess or PHP

You can also use a robots.txt file that sits in your root folder: Using robots.txt to block the most common bad bots - Firewall Forums . Some of the nasty bots will simply ignore this though.

RickJ · May 17, 2006, 04:26 AM

Thanks LT. The server is Linux; I'll try adding those disallow lines to robots.txt as the link suggests. If that takes care of most of them I'll be happy with that!

LTheobald · May 17, 2006, 08:23 AM

If you're feeling brave Rick, the .htaccess file would be the way to go. Most bad bots simply ignore robots.txt and it's these bad bots doing the spamming. With the .htaccess file you'll have much more contriol.

Here is a great site with plenty of links: Behind the Scenes with Apache's .htaccess - Brainstorms and Raves

About 1/2 down is a section titled "Using .htaccess to Ban Bad Bots and Spammers". Take a look at some of those.

RickJ · May 17, 2006, 08:29 AM

Thanks, LT. I'm glad you added this. I added the robots.txt file with a huge list of Denys' right after my last post, but apparently that's worthless. I've got 3 spam entries since then already.

I'll try what they suggest at the section you pointed to.

RickJ · May 19, 2006, 04:47 AM

I've not messed with htaccess yet, but after uploading the robots.txt file I swear, it seems like I'm getting MORE spam now!

Possible stupid question: Is it possible that bots can be attracted by a robots.txt file??

AMysticWeb · Jun 2, 2006, 07:48 PM

As LTheobald mentions, you could try an image with text from the image required in a textbox.

You could do this with a text prompt as well as an image. Just make sure the validation requires exact spelling input.

One of the things that make this type of bot spamming is the use of common names for Guestbooks. Guestbook.htm or html as a simple example and with FrontPage the results go to guestlog.htm, so the bots are searching for this too.

Moving away from the common names for these pages can help a little as well.

noindex, nofollow can help as well, but without ASP, PHP or other secure script, it is next to impossible to totally eliminate spam.

I think in the time being, name change and gif or text validation might offer a little reprieve.



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