Dear “API providers”, I don’t want a relationship.

Re:Dear “API providers”, I don’t want a relationship. by lazyjones on Sunday October 07, 2012 @06:53AM (#4623072)

In general, blocking IPs is not really useful anymore since far too much abuse comes over Tor, open proxies, or potentially short-lived dynamic IPs (major German ISPs let you switch IPs as often as you want) and if you care about legitimate users, you cannot block these.

The point that websites without API-key get hit by this anyway is valid though and legitimate users won't be annoyed too much by IP-blocking abusers of the API for API access only (block all Tor exit nodes for the API too, who cares ...).

You could also mention that authentication, registration etc. probably make APIs slower and more of a burden for the servers too ...

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Re:Dear “API providers”, I don’t want a relationship. by tommorris on Sunday October 07, 2012 @07:02AM (#4623082)

So, on the Tor front: Wikipedia has blocked Tor users from editing since, well, since forever. For the occasional Chinese dissident or whoever who actually wants to legitimately edit over Tor or another blocked IP from an account, they can request IP block exemption from an administrator.

Another solution is to actually use User-Agent strings. Nominatim, OpenStreetMap's reverse geocoder, recommends that legitimate users put an email address in their User-Agent string. So it might read "My Craptastic Mashup v1. Maintained by: <[email protected]>". If there's a legitimate problem, email them.

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