rms asking about badspammer.html

rms asking about badspammer.html

[James E Wilson]

rms saw a user bug report about the badspammer.html file on gcc.gnu.org,
and started asking the GCC SC about it.  We told him it was to frustrate
spam bots, and users with properly working browsers should never see
it.  Now rms is asking how effective it is, who wrote it, whether they
can use it on other GNU servers, etc.  These are questions the GCC SC
can't answer.  Anyone want to take this up with rms?  Or give us some
pointers where to look for more info?

The user incidentally was using a web download accelerator, GetRight
(www.getright.com), which has some interesting features, but apparently
also a few bugs.
-- 
Jim Wilson, GNU Tools Support, http://www.SpecifixInc.com

Re: rms asking about badspammer.html

[Christopher Faylor]

On Thu, Mar 31, 2005 at 04:52:22PM -0800, James E Wilson wrote:
>rms saw a user bug report about the badspammer.html file on gcc.gnu.org,
>and started asking the GCC SC about it.  We told him it was to frustrate
>spam bots, and users with properly working browsers should never see
>it.  Now rms is asking how effective it is, who wrote it, whether they
>can use it on other GNU servers, etc.  These are questions the GCC SC
>can't answer.  Anyone want to take this up with rms?  Or give us some
>pointers where to look for more info?

Check out /www/conf/spamblock.

cgf

Re: rms asking about badspammer.html

[James E Wilson]

On Fri, 2005-04-01 at 06:56, Christopher Faylor wrote:
> Check out /www/conf/spamblock.

Thanks for the info.

rms has asked that we improve the text on the badspammer.html file to
make it clear what is going on.  He isn't objecting to the blocking,
only the fact that we claim to have detected a spambot, when all we have
detected is that a download accelerator is being used.  For instance,
adding text that says we disallow the use of download accelerators
because they place too much load on our servers.  If we do that, then an
end user has a better chance of understanding why they ended up on the
badspammer page.
-- 
Jim Wilson, GNU Tools Support, http://www.SpecifixInc.com

Re: rms asking about badspammer.html

[James E Wilson]

On Fri, 2005-04-01 at 06:56, Christopher Faylor wrote:
> Check out /www/conf/spamblock.

Rms has asked that we have two files, instead of just the one
badspammer.html file.  One file would be used for known spambots.  And
the other would be for download accelerators.  If this is too
inconvenient, we could try to argue it with him.
-- 
Jim Wilson, GNU Tools Support, http://www.SpecifixInc.com