

Github spamming... - jfd
http://github.com/repositories

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hyyypr
I can't believe that they haven't got a captcha (or similar) anti bot system
upon account creation. I these spammy days, it's a must. And even more for
such popular website. Anyway I bet this will be fixed in the following days.
Afaik, most captcha system are crackable, and if not, will be in the next few
months/year. Google has been working on a new captcha system:
[http://googleresearch.blogspot.com/2009/04/socially-
adjusted...](http://googleresearch.blogspot.com/2009/04/socially-adjusted-
captchas.html)

This is kind of old, I wonder how it has progressed.

~~~
kneath
As you noted, most captchas are crackable. This is the reason we have decided
not to implement one. It's common thought that captchas reduce spam -- which
they do -- but they do so by reducing total signups (human and robot).

Personally, I'd rather deal with spam in craftier ways than prevent legitimate
people from signing up.

~~~
hyyypr
Thanks for replying. But I have a hard time understanding how filling a
captcha can make people willing to signup run away.

Either you're offering a lightweight service with one single and simple
functionnality (like instapaper.com for instance, which only requires a
username for registration (not even a password !)); either you offer a multi
purpuse service like github and if someone begins the registration process on
a site like this and runs off because he doesn't want to fill a captcha..
maybe it's better he doesn't register after all.

Anyway what I really want to know is your numbers and how you got them :)

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vorador
The correct link is this : [http://github.com/ka891fqrxqn6au1/Download-
Prophecy--Forsake...](http://github.com/ka891fqrxqn6au1/Download-Prophecy--
Forsaken--The-movie)

~~~
bartl
Well, at this exact moment, the two top entries are:

* Jane-Austen-Book-Club--The-dvd

* Download-Jane-Austen-Book-Club--The-movie

which works good enough as examples.

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PatrickTulskie
I don't really understand why you would have your bot spam a site that's
dedicated to developers and software engineers.

~~~
there
one spams github because github.com has a high google page rank.

~~~
timdorr
The project links are rel="nofollow", though. There really is no benefit to
spamming it.

~~~
PatrickTulskie
I thought that at first too, but then I picked apart the link. They are
javascript redirects to another site that then forwards the traffic on to a
referal system for another site. Also, I'm not totally sure every search
engine completely honors rel='nofollow'

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pjhyett
We're aware of the problem and sorry about the annoyance. It's a targeted
attack, so normal solutions to prevent this aren't going to work. We'll figure
it out, though.

edit: the spam listings should be gone within the hour.

