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 Genuine users are blocked from my site using http:BL
Author: A.W22   (8 Jan 13 5:57pm)
Since installing http:BL, we keep getting reports of false positives - genuine users who are unable to use our website as their dynamic IP addresses are blacklisted. What should be done in such cases?

Mind you that as many people get their dynamic IP addresses assigned by their ISP, there's little they can do if many of these IPs have been used for spam. It might not even be the fault of the ISP as it's possible some users had their computers infected with viruses.

Had HoneyPot been installed on a great percentage of Internet sites, it would have been easy to force ISPs to closely monitor their IPs but as this isn't the current situation, how can we keep our spam protection and not blocking legitimate users?


See the forum thread on: http://colnect.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=46&t=28782
 
 Re: Genuine users are blocked from my site using http:BL
Author: D.Baldini   (30 Jan 13 6:40pm)
I've been forced to remove honeypot on my PHPbb - wiki website because of false positives.

Edit:
For completion, I found out that the false positives were caused by my local BL filter, called abyssguard.php, which was blocking regular users not for being backlisted by Projecthoneypot, but for detecting a '%27' in their GET URL string.

Post Edited (1 Feb 13 12:04pm)
 
 Re: Genuine users are blocked from my site using http:BL
Author: H.User1325   (2 Feb 13 2:27pm)
Thanks for the update.
 
 Re: Genuine users are blocked from my site using http:BL
Author: N.Vetten   (15 Mar 13 8:12am)
Dynamic IPs are a huge problem in the anti-spam fight - blacklists exclude innocent users as well as abusers and mobile broadband use and spammer abuse is very prevalent in Africa and other developing countries which is where I'm based.

I have http:BL only on one particularly problematic ecommerce site - I installed a Drupal plugin which gives visitors the opportunity to temporarily whitelist themselves and have to hope that it doesn't put visitors off. One plugin I tried just locked people out and told them to whitelist at projecthoneypot.org, which can't be accessed if your IP is on a blacklist.

As mobile internet usage increases, the problem can only get worse and I'm not sure that blocklists will be a useful solution any more. I use antispam services like Mollom for Drupal and Akismet for Wordpress and comment-moderation and install honeypots on all my form submissions, instead of Captchas, to try and keep it human user-friendly



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