Shattered Sun

So, in further research, it appears that AoHell doesn’t like Spam Karma. This is bad because it caused my comments to appear closed to visitors using the AoHell browser. So, if you use the AoHell browser, I suggest you try with Internet Explorer or better yet, download Firefox since it’s a Web Standards based browser. Why use a Web Standards based browser? Because you’ll see the internet the way designers mean you to see it. If you want to know why AoHell hates Spam Karma, read on.

Here’s what Dr. Dave has to say regarding issues AoHell users may be having:

In some case, people commenting might be accessing the net via a proxy server or a router with load balancing which affects their public IP. In effect, their apparent IP when posting the comment is different from the one they ostensibly used to pull the page with the comment form.

This is pretty much impossible to distinguish from evil guys using IP spoofing to flood your blog. One large group of such users are AOL subscribers using the AOL browser, which forces them through AOL’s crappy proxy servers. This case can be detected more or less and comment form will be automatically closed with a message informing commenters that they need to use a different browser (anything else than AOL’s, really) to comment.

However, there are also some companies and large networks where the use of proxy servers might make it impossible for people to comment if you have OSA’s IP check enabled.

I am working on finding a workaround for these people, or at least a way to detect the use of legit proxy, but it isn’t looking too good at the moment.

I personally think that IP check is too important to be disabled, even if it is likely to create a few false positives: it is one of the strongest and surest sign of spambot use. If you do not think this is an acceptable loss, however, you should disable this option, but be aware that this will weaken SK’s protection level. Another approach is to recommend that users commenting from behind a proxy registers on the blog, which should boost their karma just enough to let them in with auto-moderation: not ideal, but acceptable.

So there you have it. Basically, don’t use AoHell.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, March 22nd, 2005 at 12:58 pm and is filed under Web Delight. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.