Case Study: Drupal.org blocks spammers and slashes spam-cleanup time with Distil Networks

Drupal.org keeps spammers out of its community and bad content off its websites with Distil Networks' browser fingerprinting technology

Drupal.org, the open-source CMS community hub with millions of pages and a high Google PageRank, was under constant attack from spammers who created bogus accounts (often via proxies) to post SEO links and junk content. Existing controls like Mollom and Honeypot couldn’t stop real people using proxy tools, so volunteers and staff spent large amounts of time deleting spam and community metrics were skewed by fake accounts.

Drupal.org integrated Distil Networks’ Cloud CDN browser‑fingerprinting into the registration process to unmask repeat offenders before accounts were used. In nine months Distil fingerprinted ~20,000 new accounts, flagged about 10% as likely spam, and revealed only 200–300 persistent bad actors. The result: spammers stopped trying, site cleanup time fell from roughly 2 FTE to a fraction of that, volunteers could focus on community work, and engagement metrics became more accurate.

Drupal

Brendan Blaine

Technology Manager