[Sussex] Signing up to the Moot next week.

[Mark Harrison]

Steve,

Are you sure it was a prankster.

It's just struck me that it might have been a robot / spider?

Any piece of spidering code that hit the site could follow every links,
including the buttons that are auto-created to sign up every individual
who's previously registered.

Are you able to track user agent that made the HTTP requests?

My main (personal) business site gets spidered several times a day according
to log analysis.

The solution would be, of course, to either remove the "Sign up Mark
Harrison" button, or to write more code so that it checked user agent and
only presented those buttons if it was a "real person" browsing. The quick
and dirty solution might be to add a robots.txt ....

Mark

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Steve Dobson" <steve at dobson.org>
To: "Sussex Linux User Group" <sussex at mailman.lug.org.uk>
Sent: Friday, October 22, 2004 11:41 PM
Subject: [Sussex] Signing up to the Moot next week.


> Guys
>
> It appears that some one signed up everyone on the list.  I don't know
> why, maybe they were just being "helpful" so that everyone who be on
> the list.
>
> Luckly the database table holds more information than just the
> names of people attending and I can tell (and so can you if
> you look below) that the names were signed up within a few seconds
> of each other.  I know that it wasn't a new atendee that did this
> is the only new name on the list is Antoine's, and he signed up
> well before 22:00hrs.
>
> I have reset the database so that anyone signed up after 22:00 hrs
> is now removed (except John Davis as he has signed on again just
> after I updated the database.)
>
> If the "prankster" persisses then I will modify the code so that it
> is not possible for him to do this.  The new procedure will require
> everyone to "log on", and only know people will be able to sign other
> members up (just like everyone can now).
>
> When I designed the form I knew that someone could do this, but didn't
> think that they would pose a big problem.  It only takes a few seconds
> for me to change the database back by hand.  I designed the form in
> such a way that from the web page you can only sign up - so no one
> would be removed how didn't want to.
>
> The database table now looks like this.  So if you when to the page and
> found that you had already been signed up and now name now has a
> 'N' by it then you will need to sign up again - sorry.
>
> +-------------------+--------+---------------------+---------------------+
> | name              | attend | signedup            | created             |
> +-------------------+--------+---------------------+---------------------+
> | Steve Dobson      | Y      | 2004-10-22 15:31:35 | 2004-08-01 17:07:52 |
> | Gareth Ablett     | Y      | 2004-10-22 15:51:34 | 2004-08-01 17:20:50 |
> | Antoine JOSSERAND | Y      | 2004-10-22 17:36:39 | 2004-10-22 17:36:39 |
> | Paul Baines       | N      | 2004-10-22 22:08:23 | 2004-09-25 09:42:01 |
> | Al Bennett        | N      | 2004-10-22 22:09:15 | 2004-08-21 19:48:28 |
> | Andrew Guard      | N      | 2004-10-22 22:09:17 | 2004-09-25 20:25:07 |
> | Angelo Servini    | N      | 2004-10-22 22:09:19 | 2004-08-20 15:47:27 |
> | David Chapman     | N      | 2004-10-22 22:09:21 | 2004-08-20 09:19:07 |
> | Derek Harding     | N      | 2004-10-22 22:09:22 | 2004-08-23 07:34:50 |
> | Gavin Stevens     | N      | 2004-10-22 22:09:29 | 2004-09-24 23:38:29 |
> | George Hibberd    | N      | 2004-10-22 22:09:34 | 2004-09-24 15:53:42 |
> | Mark Harrison     | N      | 2004-10-22 22:09:37 | 2004-08-20 11:11:49 |
> | John Gregory      | N      | 2004-10-22 22:09:44 | 2004-09-28 15:08:44 |
> | Jon Fautley       | N      | 2004-10-22 22:09:50 | 2004-08-01 17:07:52 |
> | Karl Jorgensen    | N      | 2004-10-22 22:09:54 | 2004-09-24 16:59:51 |
> | Matt Brown        | N      | 2004-10-22 22:10:12 | 2004-09-24 15:53:35 |
> | Nik Butler        | N      | 2004-10-22 22:10:16 | 2004-08-01 17:07:52 |
> | Paul Morris       | N      | 2004-10-22 22:10:20 | 2004-08-01 17:07:52 |
> | Peter Tyrrell     | N      | 2004-10-22 22:10:24 | 2004-09-30 10:39:45 |
> | Steve Williams    | N      | 2004-10-22 22:10:28 | 2004-08-23 22:18:42 |
> | Trevor Marshall   | N      | 2004-10-22 22:10:35 | 2004-09-29 18:30:24 |
> | John Davis        | Y      | 2004-10-22 23:12:20 | 2004-09-26 11:02:11 |
> +-------------------+--------+---------------------+---------------------+
>
> Steve
>
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