[Koha] Purchase suggestions spammed

Elaine Bradtke eb at efdss.org
Tue Jul 30 04:50:40 NZST 2013


Yes, the anonymous suggestions were allowed (not any more!). Ours is a
small library, and we don't use patron logins. In the six months since the
suggestions feature was enabled we never had a single legit suggestion
submitted.  Our users tend to e-mail or phone us if they think there's
something we should have in the collection.  So, I've shut the whole
suggestions feature down.  Eventually we may enable the user logins, but
there has been no demand for it.  We're mainly a research collection (very
little circulation, no holds), so there's not much they can do once they
log in!

On Mon, Jul 29, 2013 at 5:40 PM, Galen Charlton <gmc at esilibrary.com> wrote:

> Hi,
>
> On Mon, Jul 29, 2013 at 9:37 AM, Owen Leonard <oleonard at myacpl.org> wrote:
>
>> > In the past 24 hours we've received over 2000 'purchase suggestions'
>> which
>> > appear to be links to pornography
>>
>> Do you allow anonymous suggestions? (AnonSuggestions system preference)
>>
>
> In particular, if AnonSuggestions is on but the main "suggestion" system
> preference is off, Koha will still let one place suggestions if one knows
> (as the spammer's bot does) what the URL of the OPAC suggestions form is.
>  (That's a bug, by the way).
>
> Consequently, to stop suggestions outright, you should off both system
> preferences.  However, it may be sufficient to stop the spam by leaving
> 'suggestion' on while turning off AnonSuggestions.  That way, patrons will
> continue to be able to make suggestions, but they'll have to log into your
> account first.
>
> Regards,
>
> Galen
> --
> Galen Charlton
> Manager of Implementation
> Equinox Software, Inc. / The Open Source Experts
> email:  gmc at esilibrary.com
> direct: +1 770-709-5581
> cell:   +1 404-984-4366
> skype:  gmcharlt
> web:    http://www.esilibrary.com/
> Supporting Koha and Evergreen: http://koha-community.org &
> http://evergreen-ils.org
>



-- 
Elaine Bradtke
Data Wrangler
VWML
English Folk Dance and Song Society | http://www.efdss.org
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