Give them a cookie
Download TruBar 3.0(Lessen) TruBar 4.1(Silent) Help for TruBar
TruBar 3.0(Lessen) stops 100% of the automated spam, but I had to change it.
The change is called TruBar 4.0(Silent)
You can see how TruBar 3.0(Lessen) works on the registration page.
Have a nice blogging.
[UPDATE] TruBar 4.0(Silent) is updated to TruBar 4.1(Silent). The installation process is simplified and all possible cookie problems are cleaned off.
The download link points now to the new version.
[EDIT] If you need help for this plugin, please visit TruBar home page.
You all are sick and tired of the spam in your Akismet spam-bin. Right?
I wasn’t happy too.
Then I made TruBar.
The concept
In coding we give cookies to the registered user, or to mark preferences or for thousands of other things.
We never give cookies to the robots, because no robot will take cookie to mark itself as a robot.
Then why not giving cookies to the human users?
If the user doesn’t hold a cookie it is to show that this user is not human.
There are many ways to give cookie to human and one only way for the robots - find it.
But we can help robots to find the wrong cookies.
TruBar has plenty of them.
What is TruBar 3.0 (Lessen)
It is very small plugin (less than 2KB) which gives cookies to humans :D
If you get the cookies you can post or you can register in my weblog.
If you can not take them, then you are a robot.
That is the simplest way to stop automated registration and comment posting.
With TruBar automated comment posting is stopped on POST and even Akismet doesn’t know about the attempt.
In this regard TruBar is the best Akismet helper.
In fact Akismet is left only with the track-back work.
As you can see in my weblog, you must click on a link to unlock comment posting.
Once you click on the unlock link you get a cookie.
That is it.
No security images.
No popUp windows.
No sophisticated checks and filtering.
Then you click the “Submit” button.
Your comment is received and your cookies are taken away from you.
Next time you’ll get cookies again ;)
It is the same with the user Registration.
Click the unlock link and then the submit button.
The robot must UNDERSTAND the request and execute it.
But there is no link and page to go for the cookies.
They are right here on the same page, yet unreachable for the bots.
Well, there is plenty cookies around for the robots.
If they get them, they’ll never be able to post.
Is it easy to install TruBar 3.0(Lessen)?
The “Lessen” word is Bulgarian and means easy
Easy to install, easy for the user, easy for the system.
There is nothing to load except a small function, which gives cookies, if you click on the link.
The only scary think is that you must edit your
and
You need to insert in them two cookie checks and one cookie “kill”. (Code is provided with the instalation ZIP file)
If you want to have the red warning above the “submit” button, you must edit your comments.php in all your themes.
There is one robot-trap file in the ZIP, which you must rename if you want to have unique name, and multiply it with different names for better result .
How to install TruBar?
Download TruBar 3.0(Lessen) TruBar 4.1(Silent)
Read INSTALL.txt in the ZIP file.
The name
What “TruBar” stands for?
“Tru” stands for true and comes from Truden, which in Bulgarian means difficult
“Bar” is bar.
I’ve already told you what “Lessen” means?
Few BAD words about the spamers
We all know that spammers are CLEVER.
To be clever with TruBar, the spammer must personally target you.
Still, the sucker must be VERY clever to do “normal” SPAM, over TruBar’s protection.
TruBar 3.0(Lessen) is lighter version of TruBar 2.0(Lessen), which is not released.
I’ll keep it for darker days ;)
Important to know!
TruBar is making your weblog much faster.
It stops SPAM on POST and doesn’t pass it to Akismet for additional processing.
TruBar does one check - cookies.
Simple and fast.
The End
22 Responses to “Give them a cookie”
RSS for comments in this post
May 23rd, 2007 at 7:44 pm
[…] fixes and everything about blogging, especially with Wordpress. Go ahead, subscribe to our feed!TruBar 3.0 (Lessen) is a plugin that asks anonymous users to click on a link before posting a comment or […]
May 23rd, 2007 at 8:09 pm
Great idea that just might work. I will try it out on my site which now gets many spam comments a day
May 23rd, 2007 at 8:15 pm
It works on my weblog for more than two weeks now, without single spam posting.
May 23rd, 2007 at 9:03 pm
this looks great, going to give it a try!
May 23rd, 2007 at 10:27 pm
sorry, test :O
May 23rd, 2007 at 11:05 pm
dgdfgdfdfgsdfgsdfg
May 23rd, 2007 at 11:36 pm
just test
May 23rd, 2007 at 11:37 pm
then anonymous users must click unlock every time they post?
May 23rd, 2007 at 11:50 pm
Yes, and this is the best protection.
If spammer personally targets you, he/she can come and take your cookies, give them to the bot and spamm you until year 2029 (cookie expiration).
You can give your anonymous visitors the right to post after the first check by not inserting
in wp-comments-post.php and not using the “cleaner” check/kill with comments.php and cleaner.php (explained in the installation file)
In this case anonymous will still see the UNLOCK link.
To hide it from them we have to make another check for cookies.
I don’t like to have too many if’s in my files.
May 24th, 2007 at 12:09 am
OK, here it is specially for you, Nice.
If you do not insert the above mentioned line in wp-comments-post.php
OPEN trubar3_lessen.php
FIND:
CHANGE to:
Now your anonymous visitors will not need to click again on the link and will not see it anymore.
DO NOT DO THIS!
May 24th, 2007 at 3:26 pm
I’m trying this out too
May 24th, 2007 at 6:27 pm
Merci mais pas usable
May 24th, 2007 at 6:54 pm
Are you saying that is not usable, Amine!?
Why do you think so?
May 25th, 2007 at 7:33 am
try
May 25th, 2007 at 6:52 pm
I love the concept behind the plugin, but wouldn’t it cause problems for people with text-only browsers, or those who have JavaScript turned off? I’m not really the biggest accesibility nerd ever, but it makes sense.
May 25th, 2007 at 7:10 pm
Yes, it could be problem for users with cookies disabled too.
I don’t care about users with cookies and js disabled.
They must trust me and my weblog, if they want I to trust them. So, put the browser on normal run.
We probably get one text browser on 100000 visitors and much more spam bots for the same number.
Such visitors can always contact me if they think that their comment is very important.
I’ll immediately register an account for them.
May 26th, 2007 at 2:04 am
[…] TruBar 3.0 (Lessen) is a plugin that asks anonymous users to click on a link before posting a comment or registering on a weblog. […]
May 27th, 2007 at 4:42 pm
[…] TruBar 3.0 (Lessen) bitten nicht-angemeldete Kommentatoren vor dem Kommentieren noch bitten einen Weblink zu klicken um so Spam zu vermeiden. […]
May 28th, 2007 at 4:52 pm
[…] la primera vez que nos visitas, te puedes suscribir a nuestro feed RSS aqui. Gracias por tu visita!TruBar 3.0 (Lessen) es un plugin que le pide a los usuarios anónimos que cliquen en un enlace antes de […]
May 31st, 2007 at 2:22 pm
[…] more info and download…. […]
June 15th, 2007 at 9:41 am
Test your Truebar…
July 3rd, 2007 at 5:08 pm
test trubar 4.0