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Bug 551911 - Make possible to block messages from people not in buddy list
Make possible to block messages from people not in buddy list
Status: RESOLVED OBSOLETE
Product: empathy
Classification: Core
Component: Contact List
2.32.x
Other Linux
: Normal enhancement
: ---
Assigned To: empathy-maint
empathy-maint
: 558773 588293 593351 605526 606000 607161 608763 610883 616811 635274 640693 675763 (view as bug list)
Depends on:
Blocks:
 
 
Reported: 2008-09-12 05:56 UTC by Dubon
Modified: 2018-05-22 13:15 UTC
See Also:
GNOME target: ---
GNOME version: ---



Description Dubon 2008-09-12 05:56:49 UTC
I do know if it is a empathy bug or a msn bug, but every 20 minutes I receive a message like this:

"Hey User
I would like to chat with you but I can not get msn to stay online.
You you can send me a chat request here http://GildaAckermannest.blogspot.com
My name on the site it kellylove "

I think It is possible to ignore this messages by blocking all messages from people not in the buddy list. I think other programs let user enable that option.
Comment 1 Xavier Claessens 2008-09-23 08:37:38 UTC
I confirm that you should be able to block messages from people not in the buddy list. However your message is clearly a spam and does not comes from Empathy.
Comment 2 Rene Dohan 2008-10-07 14:27:38 UTC
Spam is very frequent on ICQ too , and now i started have this problem and found that pidgin have bot-sentry plugin as spam protection. I'll have to switch to pidgin for now.
Comment 3 Dubon 2008-10-07 15:56:27 UTC
Yes, I know it does not come from Empathy and it is due to a bad designed protocol but it is very annoying and I think it is a necessary enhancement.

Thanks
Comment 4 Frederic Peters 2008-11-01 13:29:43 UTC
*** Bug 558773 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
Comment 5 Frederic Peters 2009-07-12 12:48:05 UTC
*** Bug 588293 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
Comment 6 Frederic Peters 2009-08-28 11:27:52 UTC
*** Bug 593351 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
Comment 7 Thorsten Sick 2009-10-20 16:29:01 UTC
A simple spam blocking rule would be:

A message from a person not in the address book containing an URL is SPAM and is automatically blocked

This should keep away all the spam I got so far without blocking innocent people
Comment 8 Michael Chang 2009-10-20 23:11:03 UTC
That seems more complicated than the suggestion in comment #1 (block messages from people not in contact list)... and assumes that the spam won't change in the future to not include URLs.
Comment 9 Thorsten Sick 2009-10-22 16:44:17 UTC
This is right. It is a bit more complicated. But it should reduce False Positives (blocking messages you wanted) to an amount where you can switch this feature on by default.

The goal of the spam seems to be to direct the user to a homepage that:
- installs Scareware
- exploits vulnerabilities in browser/pdf viewer/flash viewer
- (paid) sex pages
- other evil stuff in the www

To be successful with this, an attacker has to send a link that is easy to click and follow. Till they change their tactics, looking for the url is a good way to reduce FPs (maybe even to 0). And I have lots of experience with FPs, you really don't want people to complain about them.
Comment 10 Frederic Peters 2010-01-04 11:27:35 UTC
*** Bug 606000 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
Comment 11 Guillaume Desmottes 2010-01-06 12:13:30 UTC
*** Bug 605526 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
Comment 12 Frederic Peters 2010-01-16 19:13:03 UTC
*** Bug 607161 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
Comment 13 Michael Van Dorpe 2010-01-17 11:29:25 UTC
I would think that this is not just a spam issue, but also a privacy issue. There should be a possibility to block people from seeing your status.
Comment 14 Chief 2010-01-17 17:48:15 UTC
I'm a pretty smart guy (led to believe, lol) and I couldn't figure out how to protect my privacy/spam with Empathy so that is why I reported this issue. I just switched over to Pidgin (which was the old Ubuntu standard), and fixed the privacy in the preferences and plugins with the Bot Sentry Plugin.
Comment 15 Frederic Peters 2010-02-02 09:07:37 UTC
*** Bug 608763 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
Comment 16 Guillaume Desmottes 2010-02-24 15:51:54 UTC
*** Bug 610883 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
Comment 17 Misha Shnurapet 2010-03-18 09:18:34 UTC
This applies to authorization requests (spam comes with the attached messages).
Comment 18 Guillaume Desmottes 2010-04-26 07:27:39 UTC
*** Bug 616811 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
Comment 19 David 2010-05-05 14:55:32 UTC
I don't mind receiving the first spam message but i need some feature to block that person from being able to continue sending me more. 
Dont need empathy to check the content of the message, only need to being able to block that sender forever. 

I think this is a needed feature empathy lacks for. 

Regards
Comment 20 tereshkosg 2010-06-05 13:59:09 UTC
I vote for this feature. It is extremely annoying to receive spam messages on ICQ either with authorization requests or without. I receive approximately one per day, not too bad, but it shows empathy in a bad light since I have just recently started using it after switching from pidgin.

Sadly, I do not understand the complexity of this fix. Adding a filter for whether message comes from someone in the contact list or not - does not seem to be a great deal.

People, have been complaining since 2008 ... sad that no one took this into a consideration. Has FOSS become bureaucratic? ;)
Comment 21 Sean Fenton 2010-06-26 04:24:45 UTC
I intended to simply vote for this issue to be resolved, but because I can't seem to find a way to do so or discover whether voting has been turned off for some or all users of GNOME Bugzilla -- I searched & searched, I swear --, I'll leave this comment instead.

In my case, I have two spammers (I think it's actually just one tenacious bastard) that spam me daily with "buddy requests."  Since I have no way to block them, I'm forced to navigate through the requests, selecting Deny (or whatever the wording is) every time they come through.

Please offer the ability to block spammers.  Without this feature, I will be forced to leave Empathy behind.
Comment 22 Samic 2010-08-11 09:44:27 UTC
how you can't block someone in empathy??!!
i get lots of spams everyday and i can't block them and nothing else!!
please help with this ... program!
Comment 23 André Klapper 2010-08-11 09:52:41 UTC
Please do not post "me too" comments in Bugzilla that do not add any technical value and just create bugmail for everybody. There are forums for this kind of communication. Thanks.
Comment 24 Samic 2010-08-11 09:55:59 UTC
So are you going to fix this problem or not?!
BTW: now you can feel when every time i login and i get messages that i don't want
Comment 25 Guillaume Desmottes 2010-08-11 10:13:49 UTC
This bug will be fixed at some point but I can't promise you when.
I'm waiting for the new block API before doing it.

As André said, there is no point harassing developers on a bugzilla. If the bug is reported and confirmed we are aware of it. We do our best to fix issues according our priority and resources.
Comment 26 Krzysztof Klinikowski 2010-09-13 11:08:51 UTC
That could be related to CM's too. For example Gadu Gadu allows to block user from protocol-side, the same as Tlen.pl or XMPP.
Comment 27 Guillaume Desmottes 2010-11-22 07:38:26 UTC
*** Bug 635274 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
Comment 28 Guillaume Desmottes 2010-11-24 09:45:25 UTC
Let's be clear: 
- bug #618787 is about blocking a specific contact (using https://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=28423)
- bug #551911 is about adding a "Block contacts not in my contact list" option
Comment 29 Misha Shnurapet 2011-01-04 07:31:25 UTC
Two years have passed since the developers were aware of this problem, yet there is no means to obtain privacy, and the security level is very low. It's not useable with 20 spam messages and fake authorization requests per day.

Please change version to 2.32.x
Comment 30 Omer Akram 2011-01-04 09:45:52 UTC
changed to the current version
Comment 31 André Klapper 2011-01-04 14:11:06 UTC
(In reply to comment #29)
> Two years have passed since

Do not post unhelpful comments or your account will get disabled.
See comment 23.
Comment 32 Misha Shnurapet 2011-01-04 22:13:36 UTC
Please do not create unnecessary traffic. See the last line of comment 29 for technical value.
Comment 33 André Klapper 2011-01-04 22:32:20 UTC
(In reply to comment #32)
> See the last line of comment 29 for technical value.

...which was already mentioned in comment 21 and 22. Repeating the same stuff over and over again *IS* unhelpful.

Again: Do not comment here if you don't have anything new or useful to add.
Comment 34 Frederic Peters 2011-01-27 08:55:34 UTC
*** Bug 640693 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
Comment 35 Cornwall 2011-07-18 13:40:42 UTC
With the release of Empathy 3.0 the changelog mentions adding a block feature. Since that has happened shouldn't this bug be closed? Even if all protocols are not implemented this report would be too broad anyway.
Comment 36 alejandro.perez.mendez 2011-10-21 09:09:22 UTC
Well, I have Empathy 3.2 and the problem is still there. There is a dialog where you can block users... but it only works for Jabber accounts. MSN accounts appear greyed. 

Should not be so difficult. Even the old amsn supported that from its earliest versions.
Comment 37 Guillaume Desmottes 2011-10-21 11:06:43 UTC
(In reply to comment #36)
> Well, I have Empathy 3.2 and the problem is still there. There is a dialog
> where you can block users... but it only works for Jabber accounts. MSN
> accounts appear greyed. 
> 
> Should not be so difficult. Even the old amsn supported that from its earliest
> versions.

That's because telepathy-butterfly doesn't implement the blocking API.
Comment 38 Laurent Pointecouteau 2012-05-07 19:33:07 UTC
Is blocking Windows Live messages possible, now that Empathy is using telepathy-gabble to connect to Windows Live ? I'm also suffering from a former-buddy-turned-to-spambot issue.
Comment 39 Guillaume Desmottes 2012-05-11 11:40:30 UTC
*** Bug 675763 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
Comment 40 Fabio Durán Verdugo 2013-04-07 16:31:01 UTC
any news about this issues?
Comment 41 GNOME Infrastructure Team 2018-05-22 13:15:34 UTC
-- GitLab Migration Automatic Message --

This bug has been migrated to GNOME's GitLab instance and has been closed from further activity.

You can subscribe and participate further through the new bug through this link to our GitLab instance: https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/empathy/issues/27.