[Pidgin] #14867: Chats need an "Ignore ghosters" option

Pidgin trac at pidgin.im
Sat Jan 7 06:52:48 EST 2012


#14867: Chats need an "Ignore ghosters" option
--------------------------+-------------------------------------------------
 Reporter:  MichaelKthx   |     Owner:  rekkanoryo
     Type:  enhancement   |    Status:  new       
Component:  unclassified  |   Version:  2.10.1    
 Keywords:                |  
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 I don't know what this would be classified as but...

 On AIM there is an exploit that you can enter a chatroom without the room
 announcing your entry. People have exploited this to bomb a chat and evade
 being banned as they leave before the chat owning tool can see them and
 even autoban them from the chat. These people are called ghosts and
 disrupt the chat's functionality. Pidgin should be able to detect these
 disruptive screen names and reject the messages as a setting (disable this
 setting if you can't see a friend with a buggy/glitched client) and then
 you can't see them. This can be accomplished by

 1. seeing if a screenname is in the here list before displaying the
 message/chatsend

 2. doing a whitelist that will add them when it says "X has joined the
 chat" and remove them when it says "X has left the chat"

 3. Automatically ignoring someone who sends a message without showing "x
 has joined the chat", if it is a friend they can unignore them if done by
 error. After a bot is detected it can notify the user thru a chat event
 message "(12:00 PM) This user, ImABotLol01 has joined the chat using a
 malformed method and has ignored their screenname for security purposes.
 Please un-ignore if done in error."

 3 would be the most efficent method as you won't have to check each packet
 against a whitelist and that bot would never be seen again.


 FAQ:

 Well why can't you just ignore them? They don't appear on the who's here
 list at all. Else, I'd be doing it that way.

 Can't you just report them to AOL? WAY WAY TOO MANY BOTS. Also AOL doesn't
 care about "free" users and AIM users, you are on your own. Think of it as
 Minecraft pvp vanilla where the server Admin can't help if you been
 griefed.

 Why won't AOL fix it? See Above.

 Wait, you can't ban people from AIM chats, it is NOT IRC!! Sure you can,
 it has been in AIM's protocol since 2001 and was a feature you rejected to
 implement in the client, but that's neither here or there.

 Wait, wouldn't that ruin our reputation with AOL? I think the were happy
 when you changed it from gAIM to pidgin back in 2007. Besides, AOL is
 nothing these days and is just runs chats and some news site. People have
 gone to their Facebook, where you can't find someone on the other side of
 the country just to talk to without getting a message like "lol who r u i
 delete u if i dont kno u already".

 Anyway, I think I just cleared all the excuses and questions you may have,
 please implement this.

-- 
Ticket URL: <http://developer.pidgin.im/ticket/14867>
Pidgin <http://pidgin.im>
Pidgin


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