Imperva > Case Studies > Drupal's Fight Against Spam with Browser Fingerprinting Technology

Drupal's Fight Against Spam with Browser Fingerprinting Technology

Technology Category

Analytics & Modeling - Robotic Process Automation (RPA)
Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) - Cloud Databases

Applicable Industries

Electronics
Equipment & Machinery

Applicable Functions

Product Research & Development

Use Cases

Inventory Management
Time Sensitive Networking

Services

Cloud Planning, Design & Implementation Services

About The Customer

Drupal.org is a community that supports the Drupal development project, an open-source content management software used to create many websites and applications. The community consists of over a million developers, designers, trainers, strategists, coordinators, editors, and sponsors who work together to build the Drupal software, provide support, create documentation, share networking opportunities, and more. The website managed by Drupal.org is the primary gathering point for this development effort. The community is one of the largest open-source development communities in the world, with a shared commitment to the open-source spirit.

The Challenge

Drupal.org, a community of over a million developers, designers, trainers, strategists, coordinators, editors, and sponsors, faced a significant challenge with spam. Spammers created bogus accounts to post junk content on Drupal.org's website, which has a highly coveted Google PageRank of 9. This spam was damaging to the Drupal brand and risked lowering its PageRank value. The spam was not automated but posted by actual people, making it harder to mitigate. The staff and community volunteers had to spend considerable time manually identifying and removing spam, with some spending up to half their workday on this task. Additionally, the spammer accounts skewed the community engagement metrics, making it hard to gauge the actual growth and engagement of the community. The spam also took up unnecessary space in the database and backups.

The Solution

Drupal.org needed a solution that would reduce the time spent on cleaning up spam. Initially, they tried content filtering using Mollom and a Drupal module called Honeypot, but these were ineffective against human spammers. They then decided to partner with Imperva Bot Management (formerly Distil Networks). The account registration process on Drupal.org was run through the Imperva Cloud CDN, which gathered device fingerprints on every new account. This process revealed information that helped identify and reduce the number of spammers. The data from Imperva showed that about 10% of the new accounts showed indications of being tied to spammers, and there were only about 200 to 300 bad actors creating all the bad accounts. Drupal.org added a manual step to evaluate accounts with duplicate fingerprints more closely, reducing the time spent on dealing with spam.

Operational Impact

The implementation of Imperva Bot Management solution led to fewer spammer accounts being created and less spam being posted on Drupal.org. This reduction in spam allowed volunteers to focus their time on helping members in the forum rather than removing spam comments, boosting their morale and making their contributions more meaningful. The staff also spent far less time dealing with spam. The reduction in spammers and spam helped Drupal.org fix their metrics, providing a more accurate picture of the health of their site and community. This clarity allowed them to implement strategies to increase community engagement and value, and attract more developers to work on the site.

Quantitative Benefit

About 10% of the new accounts, approximately 2000 out of 20,000, were identified as potential spam accounts.
Significant reduction in time spent on dealing with spam, from half a workday to almost none.
Fewer spammer accounts being created, leading to less spam being posted.