From what I've seen, one of the most reliable ways of ensuring that a human is filling out a form and not a bot is to have one of those warped, ocr-proof images which display a word that the user has to enter into a text field. If you've never seen it before, register a bogus account on Yahoo. If I remember correctly they use that.

Of course, keep in mind that that is not completely spam-proof. I have seen code that will read words from those images. However, it is very unlikely that the people spamming your site know about that, or are willing to put the effort into implementing it.

The other possibility, which is more effective and easier, is to have every upload mail the admin before it can be activated. When you get 20 requests in a row from spampot.np you can ignore them.
Benefit: you have full control over your system.
Drawback: you have to keep on authorizing uploads.

Update: As Abigail-II pointed out, the text-in-image thing is not exactly uber-Accessible (in the 'I'm impaired and I need access' sense). So, rather than use the gimmick, I'd say go for the admin mail. It's a simple enough system to implement, and its simplicity contributes to its effectiveness.

LAI

__END__

In reply to Re: Spammers and my form by LAI
in thread Spammers and my form by bobafifi

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