Tuesday, July 31, 2007

[itsdifferent] "HTML Form Filler spam" with CSS

It can be very frustrating when you have a form on your site which has a good and useful purpose, but almost becomes obsolete because of relentless spamming. thus forced to find a solution that was light-weight, easy to implement, and most importantly was effective.

The idea here is setting up a form with a text field and via CSS making it invisible. Then, if a post is sent to a php script handling the request and that text box has information in it, that means a human didn't fill it out, and the script is simply aborted.


Here is a simple example.

THE FORM:
Here is the xhtml for the form code:

Code:

<form method="post" action="process.php"> 
<fieldset>
  <label>Name: </label><input name="name" type="text" /><br />
  <label>Email: </label><input name="email" type="text" /><br />
  <label>Comment: </label><input name="comments" type="text" /> <input name="info" class="special" type="text" />
  <input value="Send" type="submit" /> 
</fieldset>
</form>


you will notice after the comment text box, there is another text box with the name "info" and the class "special". This is the spam fighter. I didn't want to mess up the orientation of the form, so didn't put a break between the comments box and the spam box. Just put it at the end of the line. Real people won't see it looking at the page, because turned off the visibility in CSS.

THE STYLES:

Code:

body {
line-height:35px;
font-family:Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;
color:#333;
font-size:14px;
}
.special {
width:5px;
visibility:hidden;
}


Really, the only class you need to look into is called "special". Basically, made it really small, again to avoid any design conflicts, and then assigned the visibility property with the value "hidden". This way, browsers don't make it visible, and thus people can't fill it in. However, when a spam scraper comes through the site, it's going to read it and think it should be filled in — only to their surprise.

THE SCRIPT:

The php to handle this is very straightforward. Basically, you just look to see if that field has been filled in before it was posted, and if it was, you simply break the script so no email is sent, and tell the spammer to get lost. If it's not filled in, then business as usual. To see this in action, fill out the top form and press "submit". Then, fill out the bottom form including the spam box and press submit. Process.php returns different results based on what is typed in.

Code:

$process = $_POST['process'];
$spam = $_POST['info'];
$name = $_POST['name'];
$email = $_POST['email'];
$comment = $_POST['comment'];

if ($process == "yes") {
if ($spam != "") {
echo "Stupid Spammer";
} else {
echo "No Spam. Process Script.";
// put the info here to send the email or whatever
}
} else { echo "What do you think you are doing?"; }



More Thoughts:
After doing this, spam levels from form submission went down to zero. You could always add a function to search for html in the post as an extra caution as well. It just realize once more how important CSS is to making things work right. So in this case, CSS is weapon of choice.

 
Kind Regards,
Harshul Shah.


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Wednesday, May 30, 2007

Re: [itsdifferent] Black Google !!!!!!!!!

hi,
 
This is very nice thinkin.
a good search
 
I like it.
 
bye,
 
-- Virag

Imran Petiwala <petiwala_imran@yahoo.com> wrote:
Hi,

Blackle is nothing but a black version of google.

"A few months ago, TreeHugger Mark Ontkush wrote a post on his blog EcoIron titled Black Google Would Save 750 Megawatt-hours a Year. The post lays out the following train of thought. "An all white web page uses about 74 watts to display, while an all black page uses only 59 watts." Google, which has a white background and gets about "200 million queries a day" could reduce global energy use by 750 Megawatt-hours a year by simply changing the color of its homepage to black.
In response to this post a black version of Google emerged called Blackle.com. According to Blackle's homepage at publication time, 4,408.917 Watt hours have been saved by . Nice ideas. But how does the search measure up? Very well indeed. Give it a whirl yourself and start saving energy one search at a time. :: Blackle.com

So here's your site: http://www.blackle. com/
Thanks & Regards 
Imranahmed Petiwala
 
 


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[itsdifferent] Microsoft Surface..

 
Hi All,
 
New innovation from microsoft......  It's amazing  ...
 
 
Regards,
Shirin
 

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Tuesday, May 29, 2007

[itsdifferent] Black Google !!!!!!!!!

Hi,

Blackle is nothing but a black version of google.

"A few months ago, TreeHugger Mark Ontkush wrote a post on his blog EcoIron titled Black Google Would Save 750 Megawatt-hours a Year. The post lays out the following train of thought. "An all white web page uses about 74 watts to display, while an all black page uses only 59 watts." Google, which has a white background and gets about "200 million queries a day" could reduce global energy use by 750 Megawatt-hours a year by simply changing the color of its homepage to black.

In response to this post a black version of Google emerged called Blackle.com. According to Blackle's homepage at publication time, 4,408.917 Watt hours have been saved by . Nice ideas. But how does the search measure up? Very well indeed. Give it a whirl yourself and start saving energy one search at a time. :: Blackle.com

I recommend you all to use this as your home page or default search engine. Kindly pass this on to people you know and spread the word.

So here's your site: http://www.blackle. com/

 

 

Kind Regards,

Kiran

 

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Wednesday, May 16, 2007

[itsdifferent] query on a distributed web architecture

Hi All Differents,

I am designing a web architecture for ASP.NET based applications in
which I'm planning to make a separate server for all the 3rd party
licensed tools so that I can use it for all of my different servers.
All of my servers will be on the same local network. The 3rd patty
tools will be either a single machine license or a URL license based.

I have thought of couple of options, one of them is remoting.

If anybody has implemented such architecture or have any idea then
please help me out in this.

Kind Regards,
Kiran

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Friday, May 11, 2007

Re: [itsdifferent] New Scripting Language

Hi all
 
any body get chance to work on .net 3.0 web application. Please share document or your experience. I have to start working on the same... 

 
On 4/24/07, Imran Petiwala <petiwala_imran@yahoo.com> wrote:

Hi all,


Here is an Update for u:
Sun is working on Project Semplice Basic which lets you write code using VB syntax(VB like syntax) and compiles to Java classes that will run on the Java. In other words these features are not going to be part of the Java language, rather its a new scripting language identical to VB. The compiler is in early stages of development, which compiles Semplice Basic code into Java classes. Its not meant for porting existing VB apps over to Java, but you can convert existing VB6 applications into Semplice Basic applications with some limitations by using Netbeans tools that Sun is currently working on.
This new VB type scripting language is inspired by VB, so it may attract the VB developers. But by this time I suspect most of the VB developers are attracted by C# as both can be used in mix in .Net framework. But the core advantage of the Semplice Basic is, once you compile the code into Java classes you get the benefit of "compile once, run everywhere".

Refer:
http://developers.sun.com/learning/javaoneonline/2006/coreplatform/TS-3576.pdf
http://www.adtmag.com/java/articleold.aspx?id=185

 

Thanks & Regards 

Imranahmed Petiwala

___________________________________



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Tuesday, April 24, 2007

[itsdifferent] New Scripting Language

Hi all,


Here is an Update for u:
Sun is working on Project Semplice Basic which lets you write code using VB syntax(VB like syntax) and compiles to Java classes that will run on the Java. In other words these features are not going to be part of the Java language, rather its a new scripting language identical to VB. The compiler is in early stages of development, which compiles Semplice Basic code into Java classes. Its not meant for porting existing VB apps over to Java, but you can convert existing VB6 applications into Semplice Basic applications with some limitations by using Netbeans tools that Sun is currently working on.
This new VB type scripting language is inspired by VB, so it may attract the VB developers. But by this time I suspect most of the VB developers are attracted by C# as both can be used in mix in .Net framework. But the core advantage of the Semplice Basic is, once you compile the code into Java classes you get the benefit of "compile once, run everywhere".

Refer:
http://developers.sun.com/learning/javaoneonline/2006/coreplatform/TS-3576.pdf
http://www.adtmag.com/java/articleold.aspx?id=185

 

Thanks & Regards 

Imranahmed Petiwala

___________________________________



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Saturday, January 06, 2007

Security bug found in PDF reader

 
Hi,
 
If you are using Adobe PDF reader 7.07, there is a security flaw.
 
 
Upgrading to version 8 of the Adobe Reader software removes the risk of falling victim to the malicious attack.
 
There must be automatic update, otherwise you can get a link to upgrade to the new version in Help menu in your Adobe PDF reader.

--
Regards,
Het Waghela,
http://hetwaghela.blogspot.com,
http://hetwaghela.wordpress.com (Pics of cute kids)
One day your life will flash before your eyes. Make sure its worth watching.

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Tuesday, January 02, 2007

[itsdifferent] Happy New Year

Hi,

Wish you & your family a “Very Happy and Prosperous
New Year”.

!! HAPPY NEW YEAR !!

Best regards,
Rajesh Khatri

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