Profanity Filtering 101: Repeat Characters

Brian Pontarelli

The fourth in a series of posts about the finer points of profanity filtering...

Repeat Characters

Repeat characters is another commonly used filter attack that involves the simple repetition of characters in a word. This straightforward tactic still fools many profanity filters, most of which are not designed to ignore multiple instances of the same character:

  • heeeeeeeeeeellllllllllllooooooooooooo

CleanSpeak's Profanity Filter is capable of detecting this type of filter attack and will correctly and automatically identify words regardless of the use of repeated characters.

Further Reading:

Profanity Filtering 101: The Grawlix

Profanity Filtering 101: Character Replacements & Leet Speak

Profanity Filtering 101: Phonetics