Flood/Spam blocker suggestion and question
 

This is both a question and a suggestion:

What exactly is the format of entries in the blocker? Can I use wildcards an/or boolean operators?

Right now, it seems that the search request must match the "banned message" exactly. I am not certian if wildcards or booleans are allowed, but it would be a great feature to add. For instance, I could add "hardcore AND sex" to filter all messages that contain both hardcore and sex.

I hope you get the idea.

Great client, by the way!! Keep up the good work!

Good question, it's a common one (in fact, I updated the Gnotella FAQ the other day to reflect this question at http://gnotella.nerdherd.net/help.html#Q_FOURTEEN ). No, boolean operators are not allowed. Right now Shaun is working really hard on sockets, so this is going to fall under a low priority at the moment, but it has been recognized.

-Yytrium-

One more thing... The block list is not saved after I close Gnotella.

Maybe it is supposed to be this way, but I would like that changed so it saves.

Thanks

Well, it's not "supposed" to be like that, it just never was programmed. I think I'm going to recommend to Shaun that it clears the entry after say, 60 seconds. This way nobody can abuse the feature. Whatd'ya think?

-Yytrium-

Well, I can see why you would not want the blocker list to be saved and why you even suggest it should be automatically cleared every so often. You could argue that it goes against the "open" nature of Gnutella as a whole to be able to block certain searches from propogating through your client (on an ongoing basis).

BUT..... Because Gnutella is open sourced, individuals can do whatever they want, and I may not want my compter being used to help distribute certain propoganda (some of which is obviously illegal, and I don't mean MP3s). I, personally, would like to be able to specify what I don't want propogating through my computer and keep that list at my own discression.

You can argue all you want, but in the end it comes down to CHOICE. People can choose to ignore what their client propogates or they can block something they don't believe in.

Perhaps we could have two types of item in the block list: one temporary in which Gnotella detects flooding and spamming and Gnotella can clear, and one permanent that the user can control according to his/her discression.

Not everyone may agree with me, but that is their CHOICE. I just want to have the CHOICE of blocking what I want while still supporting Gnutella.

As far as manually adding filter rules, I don't do that (anymore). But the idea of blocking, at LEAST temporarily, repeatedly abused queries is a good one. It's basic network protection at its finest. Whenever I used to use other clients than Gnotella, I'd feel naked and helpless on the network because I just knew I was participating in the abuse.

-Yytrium-

Your choice shouldn't be whether or not you want to destroy the network by blocking searches. Your choice is between using the gnutella network or not.

I've been noticing a lot of repeated denial of service type queries that are at the level where they don't trigger the autoban. I am assuming they are DOS because they occur together in cyclic sequence. These are terms like: "asf", ".asf", ".mpg", "jpg", ".jpg", ".avi", etcetera.

I've added them manually to be blocked. It's easy enuf to manually add them each time I fire up gnotella, but it would be nice to have them saved. Yeah, I know, abuse will occur as long as blocking is allowed. But having gnotella forget after 60 seconds will not stop automated re-adding of terms. The best thing to prevent casual DOS by network vandals is to not allow wildcards and require exact matches. And to set a limit on the number of banned items or else you will have someone entering 1000 lines into the banned list like "gnutella.zip", "file.rar", you get the drift.

dan:

Destroying the network? IMO, it would be destroying if there wasn't protection against flooding.

-Yytrium-

Hmmm.. this has become a much bigger and more contorvesial topic than I originally thought it would...(that's good, the entire Gnutella idea needs some serious thought and discussion to succeed).

Anyway, I still feel that a SAVEABLE custom block list would be beneficial in my opinion. (And this is just that, an OPINION. I realize some will disagree with me. If you do disagree with me, you don't have to use the saveable block list) If you are running a client, you obviously want to contribute to the network, so you will not deliberately block all searches if that is what you are worried about.

If you just want to search the network and not serve any files, you can just use one of the many web portals.

Like I said, you have the CHOICE of putting entries in the saved block list. If you think this is the wrong choice, educate me and others why.

Yytrium-
Perhaps it would help if you described exactly how Gnotella determines if a particular search is spam/flood or legitimate.