Note, I have changed the name ModCMS to BurstCMS.

Introduction

Spam is a big problem on the Internet. ModCMS will have a set of components (not a module) to deal with spam. Here are the ways that ModCMS will protect against spam.

ModCMS Anti-Chain Letter Module

First, there will be a component that specifically deals with chain letters. In case you didn’t know, a chain letter is a comment that orders you to type out the same comment somewhere else. If you do not follow that order, apparently you will be followed by some sort of bad luck. Chain letters are annoying to many people, and there needs to be code that removes chain letters specifically, as they are different from other types of spam.

Traditionally, spam contains links. A chain letter contains no such links. The keywords that are likely to appear in a chain letter are not always likely to appear in a traditional spam comment. The anti-chain letter module of ModCMS will check comments against a keyword list and will also check the similarity of the submitted comments with other comments, particularly the ones that were marked spam. Since copies of chain letters are identical or nearly identical, if a few of them are marked as spam, similar comments are likely to be spam too.

Short Comments With a Link

Comments like “lol” or “I like this site” that have a link in the comment body or in the “Website” field or even the “Name” that many commenting mechanisms have are written by spammers that are trying to promote their site. Because of this, short comments with links will either have the links removed or the comment will be deleted completely. The administrator of the ModCMS installation gets to choose based on his or her feeling towards this sort of spam.

Comments With Misspellled Misspelled Words

Comments with a lot of misspelled words are often spammers trying to write comments that get by spam keyword filters. A comment with a large percentage of words not spelled correctly will be marked for moderation so the moderator can see if it:

• is actually a spam message trying to get by a filter
• is written by somebody that isn’t a good speller
• is ASCII art, technical or slang terms, or something else that’s legit but not actually words.

Double-Posting

Posting the same message multiple times is either an accident caused by resubmitting the form or by a spammer. If both messages are identical and little time passed between form submits, the message would be spam-checked. If it passes, one copy of message is displayed. If it fails, one copy is marked for moderation and the rest are deleted.