Away Message

Misafir · Post by **Misafir** » Tue Jul 06, 2004 10:15 am

Hi,
can we use spamfilter on users away messages

Post by **Syzop** » Tue Jul 06, 2004 3:23 pm

Do you really mean the away message that is only shown in /whois? (and if you /msg that person). [If so, could you explain why?]
Or do you mean those away messages like '* Idiot is away (lunch break)' sent to all channels and stuff :P. [If so, yes... you can.. that's just channel text]

misafir · Post by **misafir** » Wed Jul 07, 2004 3:47 pm

yes i mean away messages in /whois.
many lamers use girl nick and flood the channel and automaticly say "hi" to all users and most of scripts include and enale "whois on query in active windows" so those away include spam and advertisment. I want to learn if i can blok those messages how?

thanks.

aquanight · Post by **aquanight** » Wed Jul 07, 2004 4:22 pm

There's also that mean trick they mention in the DALnet help: people try to pass off as IRCops by setting their away message. I'm sure a lot of people would LOVE being able to block users from doing things like:

Lamer is [email protected] * Blah
Lamer on @#LameChan
Lamer is away: IRC Operator
Lamer end of /WHOIS

katsklaw · Post by **katsklaw** » Wed Jul 07, 2004 4:36 pm

aquanight wrote:There's also that mean trick they mention in the DALnet help: people try to pass off as IRCops by setting their away message. I'm sure a lot of people would LOVE being able to block users from doing things like:

Lamer is [email protected] * Blah
Lamer on @#LameChan
Lamer is away: IRC Operator
Lamer end of /WHOIS

That's actually one of the fastest ways to get akilled from DALnet

AngryWolf · Post by **AngryWolf** » Wed Jul 07, 2004 4:38 pm

In my honest opinion, spam is OK, but pretending to be an IRC Operator is an other thing. This sounds like "SomeAdmin is [email protected] (Network Administrator)", which may be completely valid on a normal user who wants others to believe he is a netadmin. I don't know why to matter things like that. Only those users are ircop, whose WHOIS information includes the 313 numeric message ("SomeUser is a Network Administrator" or similar to that).

katsklaw · Post by **katsklaw** » Wed Jul 07, 2004 4:57 pm

AngryWolf wrote:In my honest opinion, spam is OK, but pretending to be an IRC Operator is an other thing. This sounds like "SomeAdmin is [email protected] (Network Administrator)", which may be completely valid on a normal user who wants others to believe he is a netadmin. I don't know why to matter things like that. Only those users are ircop, whose WHOIS information includes the 313 numeric message ("SomeUser is a Network Administrator" or similar to that).

Alot of users don't notice the difference between:

Code: Select all

*** nick is an IRCop

and

Code: Select all

 *** nick is away: IRCop

Not to mention that newbies won't know that there is a difference much less be able to see that it's actually an away message and not RAW 313. Also some newbies don't know what an away is.

So to protect those users' ignorance, DALnet made it against their rules to impersonate a staff member.

codemastr · Post by **codemastr** » Wed Jul 07, 2004 6:03 pm

Well, I don't see spam in an away message being a problem. What's next, I can't put a website in my realname? I can't have a CTCP VERSION that advertises a script, etc.? Those things aren't spam. Spam, by definition, must be unsolicited, and sent to many people. An away message is neither. You only receive the away message when you ask for it, you receive it when you do a /whois, or when you /msg someone. It also is not sent to a large number of people, it is sent only to those who specifically request to see it.

As for the "is an IRC Operator" well, I think that's the client's fault. First off, nothing requires the IRC client software to display them in such a similar manner. For example, a client could choose to display the "is an IRC Operator" message in bold and red to make it clear it is different than an away message. But even still, I really don't see it necessary. If that confuses you, then you have some real problems. What I mean is, what else is going to confuse you? Obviously, spamfilter needs to be set to filter topics because if someone wrote "official channel" these users would be fooled into thinking that it was safe to give out passwords there. And we of course need to filter hostnames, I mean, how many vhosts are there from ircops.org?

Spamfilter wasn't designed to prevent confusion for someone who doesn't know the difference between "an" and "away," it was designed to prevent spam and to reduce the number of trojans spread over IRC.

Post by **Syzop** » Wed Jul 07, 2004 6:03 pm

misafir wrote:yes i mean away messages in /whois.
many lamers use girl nick and flood the channel and automaticly say "hi" to all users and most of scripts include and enale "whois on query in active windows" so those away include spam and advertisment. I want to learn if i can blok those messages how?

Interresting. Do you have an example of that?

aquanight · Post by **aquanight** » Thu Jul 08, 2004 12:14 am

codemastr wrote:Well, I don't see spam in an away message being a problem. What's next, I can't put a website in my realname? I can't have a CTCP VERSION that advertises a script, etc.?

Funny enough, Unreal still does have features to block those :p (ban realname, ban version, and of course spamfilter applies CTCP VERSION reply as a private-notice.)

codemastr wrote:Those things aren't spam. Spam, by definition, must be unsolicited, and sent to many people. An away message is neither. You only receive the away message when you ask for it, you receive it when you do a /whois, or when you /msg someone. It also is not sent to a large number of people, it is sent only to those who specifically request to see it.

Someone could abuse the "whois on query" function (don't know if this is a common feature, but is possible for those clients that have script support

). Set my /away message to something spammy, join a channel, and mass PM with an "innocent" message. The whole channel (or at least a few people) /whois's me and see the spam. Is that solicited? (Well, it is partly the client's fault for using "whois on query"

)

codemastr wrote:As for the "is an IRC Operator" well, I think that's the client's fault... [SNIP]

I have to agree with you there

, but I can't say DALnet is the only network that have seen people do that (with the away message thing) - but as I haven't encountered anything like it personally, I further can't say much

.

katsklaw wrote:So to protect those users' ignorance, DALnet made it against their rules to impersonate a staff member.

Name one net where that isn't true

. DALnet (and maybe other nets - see above) just covers more possible methods of impersonation.

Only net I can think of with looser impersonation rules (may be wrong on this) are the "service-less" nets where nicks aren't considered owned by anyone, including IRCops.

codemastr · Post by **codemastr** » Thu Jul 08, 2004 1:14 am

Funny enough, Unreal still does have features to block those :p (ban realname, ban version, and of course spamfilter applies CTCP VERSION reply as a private-notice.)

Well, yes and no. Yeah, you can ban for it, but it's not a spam filter. Meaning, you can't set it to block a CTCP because it contains a URL, etc. You can ban based on them though, which is a bit different. I agree, away messages could be used for spam, but my point is, that's an extreme case. I would think that most URLs in away messages are harmless, not spam, so such a feature would have many, many false positives. Meaning, "I'm away reading slashdot.org" "You can contact me on the forums of mygamingsite.com" "I'm away playing poker on yahoo.com" etc.

My point is, this represents an extreme minority. Until this thread was created, I never even noticed that my client had such a feature, and I still really don't see why it is needed. I don't think many people use this (though I could be wrong) so I don't necessarily see the benefit in adding more code, and hence making things slower, when it will stop virtually no spam, and perhaps many legitimate away reasons.

katsklaw · Post by **katsklaw** » Thu Jul 08, 2004 1:47 am

aquanight wrote:
katsklaw wrote:So to protect those users' ignorance, DALnet made it against their rules to impersonate a staff member.
Name one net where that isn't true . DALnet (and maybe other nets - see above) just covers more possible methods of impersonation.

Only net I can think of with looser impersonation rules (may be wrong on this) are the "service-less" nets where nicks aren't considered owned by anyone, including IRCops.

I wasn't claiming DALnet as the only net to have done this .. it was just an example. I don't think Services has anything to do with oper impersonation .. so I feel that statement is totally irrelavant. Most nets I've seen get grumpy over it ... not just those with Services.

aquanight · Post by **aquanight** » Thu Jul 08, 2004 4:03 am

No Services don't have anything to do with it. By "service-less" I was referring to specifically EFnet and IRCnet - and their general policy of "it's not your nick, it's just the nick you happen to be using."

How many opers there actually care what nick they have (and will actually /kill people using their nicks

)? On the other hand, how many EFnet/IRCnet opers go around whacking people who /away IRCop or something

.

katsklaw · Post by **katsklaw** » Thu Jul 08, 2004 4:35 am

How many opers there care about anything?

Guest · Post by **Guest** » Thu Jul 08, 2004 1:46 pm

codemastr wrote:Well, I don't see spam in an away message being a problem. What's next, I can't put a website in my realname? I can't have a CTCP VERSION that advertises a script, etc.? Those things aren't spam.

here an example which is in away message

i join a server and sent me away like that "/away irc.xxxxxxxxx.net"
so here is my /whois info

You have been marked as being away
-
pills is [email protected] * pills
pills is connecting from *@195.x.x.x
pills is a registered nick
pills using xxx.net http://www.x.net
pills is away: irc.xxxxxxxxx.net
pills has been idle 28secs, signed on Thu Jul 08 16:36:22
pills End of /WHOIS list.

most of mirc script when you you say hi to user script auto /whois in active windows or some script send away massage to users /status.
This advertises are also can be colourfull. Cant we blok these ?