4images photo album and comment spam

I use the 4images – Image Gallery Management System to drive my photo album and have anonymous comments enabled. Comment spam started showing up about a week ago (I was getting lots and lots of comments about poker and drugs). I avoid comment spam in my blog (WordPress) by using Elliot Back’s plugin called wp-hashcash. Essentially, this plugin forces a commenter’s browser to perform a time-sensitive computation in order to post comments. If someone tries to post a comment using something other than a browser, their comment is refused. Since implementing this plugin, I have gotten exactly ZERO comment spams to my blog.

Since Elliot’s plugin works so well for WordPress, I decided to port it to 4images. Since implementing this mod, I have received ZERO spam comments in my photo album. Plus, I am tracking how many attempts are being made to post spam to the photo gallery and it looks like I’m blocking 20-25 attempts per day. I’ve written up the instructions on how to implement this mod.

Comments (12) »

1. Me says:

   6/6/2005 at 7:21 pm

   Very nice implimentation!
   It worked well for my 4images :)

   Now I wonder, how did u do the difference between the original and modified files? did u use some software to compare two files and saved the report as html?

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2. Toby Simmons says:

   6/6/2005 at 8:00 pm

   Yes. ExamDiff Pro.

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3. mike says:

   11/3/2005 at 5:48 am

   i don’t get this to wrk,

   what do you mean by
   “NOTE that the hashcash_add_hidden_tag() function on line 607 of the new file replaces text in your comment_form.html template file. You might need to modify this section of code (or your templates). “

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4. christine says:

   11/29/2005 at 5:05 pm

   hey i was wondering how you enabled the anonymous commenting on 4images because we’re trying to have that option for our site. thanks

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5. Toby Simmons says:

   11/29/2005 at 9:28 pm

   Christine,

   Under the control panel, edit the categories, under comments, allow from “All”. I’ve actually removed it from my site, simply because it didn’t lend itself to a commenting kind of online photo album. But it is very effective at blocking the bots!

   Cheers,

   Toby

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6. digits says:

   1/26/2006 at 2:25 am

   Can you help me , I can use the filter I got error massege
   Warning: fopen(../../spamlog.txt): failed to open stream: No such file or directory in kane-gallery/admin/plugins/spamlog_view.php on line 18
   File “../../spamlog.txt” could not be opened.

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7. Toby Simmons says:

   1/26/2006 at 6:44 am

   If you are having trouble with the fopen() part of it, you can simply comment out lines 644-646 … this will remove the logging portion. If you must have logging, you could create a spamlog.txt file in the root of your 4images directory. This file must be writable by the IUSR_MACHINE user on windows, the web user if on *nix. But commenting out the lines is the easiest fix.

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8. digits says:

   1/27/2006 at 3:36 am

   I want to use omment spam badly . I tired to ban al the spammer :(
   But I’m only a simple gal , it’s needs lots of explain before I figure out a simple script.
   If you have time help me :)
   – in the root of your 4images directory
   that’s is simple for you but not for me , where the root ???? wich directory ??? can you more specific please.
   – I don’t understand this line either
   “NOTE that the hashcash_add_hidden_tag() function on line 607 of the new file replaces text in your comment_form.html template file. You might need to modify this section of code (or your templates). “

   thanks,
   digits

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9. Ashley says:

   3/5/2006 at 2:37 am

   Hi, I was wondering if this works with newer versions of 4images? I was going to try it anyway – but then I realized you have the modded details.php file all numbered… am I supposed to go through and manually delete all the numbered lines? That’s crazy – I just wanted to copy & paste and go, lol.

   Hope you read this…

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10. Toby Simmons says:

    3/5/2006 at 7:00 pm

    Ashley, just for you:

    https://www.simmonsconsulting.com/Products/Source/details.php.txt

    Cheers! :-)

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11. Weston White says:

    4/3/2006 at 8:38 pm

    Toby –

    I know I would love to have this mod as I am having the same spamming of comments that you described. The problem is that when I tested it, with a spam email I recieved, it still added the comment and showed it. What could be wrong to where it just does not work?

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12. Lee says:

    5/1/2007 at 10:59 am

    I had a hacker screw up my site that had this on. After fixing most things I thought I had modded I opened the site back up – after less than 24 hours I had 2500+ comment spams! I reinstalled this mod (the template was the same, but details.php I had to change) and it’s working again! Two comments:
    1) I can’t see the spam on the plugin in admin, but it’s ok I can download and see it (i have to delete it every now and again it gets so big!)
    2) When modifying details.php it’s a pain to go through and delete all the 560| etcs.
    But great mod, and thanks a million!

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