How to fight against Xrumer?

[Mark.B]

well Mark, I'll have to disagree with you there..
I'm sure there is a way to find a list of all sites that use it but do remember this isn't only for vbulletin.
They have plugins for just about ever forum out there as well as wordpress, joomla, durple, wiki's and really just about any site that you can think of with a registration page.

They also have ways to help advertisers, so it's not like all their eggs are in one basket.

A note from their site "The KeyCAPTCHA service provides free website protection against spam. More than 20,000 websites are being protected by our service. "
I know 20,000 isn't a large number by any means, but I think they have a pretty good grasp on what they are doing.

Yes but that 20,000 was mostly accrued BEFORE they shoved that Like button on there, which was only a month or so back.

[Loco.M]

Yes but that 20,000 was mostly accrued BEFORE they shoved that Like button on there, which was only a month or so back.

Ah, you may have a point there.

well regardless, I'm going to buy the brandfree version tonight (if I remember) so I won't have that button anyways.

[snakes1100]

Not convinced by KeyCaptcha.

On vB4 it works but seems to stop ALL registrations, people struggle with what to do.

Id disagree with that statement Mark, been using kc for quite sometime on vb4, not received any emails thru the contact us form about users having issues with it or not being able to figure it out, still maintain a valid user registration of 100-150 daily without issue.

Ah, you may have a point there.

well regardless, I'm going to buy the brandfree version tonight (if I remember) so I won't have that button anyways.

Was gonna go with the custom one for one site & see how it works, been thinking about for a while now.

[Fergal]

...I'm using right now GlowHost - Spam-O-Matic and vbStopForumSpam but they are useless...

That's not my experience, that mod works very well on my forum. Obviously it doesn't keep all spammers out, but it is a big help. Perhaps you need to adjust the settings for that mod in your ACP to make it more effective.

...It's also worth considering blocking Gmail if a lot of your spammers are using it. More than 70% of mine do. I just blocked it. There is no point trying to fight it. Very few genuine members seem to use Gmail, at least on my site anyhow...

Personally I wouldn't like to do that, I use gMail as my main email address and am reluctant to join forums that don't allow it.

[Mark.B]

Personally I wouldn't like to do that, I use gMail as my main email address and am reluctant to join forums that don't allow it.

Depends on the site.

Some sites, mine included, are finding the ration of genuine Gmail signups to spam in the region of 1:10,000 or even worse.
If a site gets loads of genuine Gmail signups then it's a problem. If like mine you hardly get any, then I'll happily trade off the potential loss of one genuine account against not spending hours pruning spammers.

[Ramsesx]

KeyCaptcha is crap, doesn't work on all devices. Death penalty for all spammer could help to reduce spam.

[BirdOPrey5]

Not the biggest fan of putting a puzzle together to register but I like it far better than ReCatpha or other word based ones- I get those things wrong 5 times in a row sometimes, I don't know how people put up with it. More than once I've given up in frustration.

[GODOVERYOU]

I hate to burst the bubble hear but keycaptcha is bot solvable... You may prevent newbie link spammers from getting at you, but if you encounter someone who is motivated to tackle your forum there is little you can do about it. Even more extreme measures like renaming fields or inserting hidden fields will be worked around by a skilled operator. The mods that do things like time the registration are also easily sidestepped, so those just weed out the newbs as well.

[Hartmut]

Therefor I believe that a couple of good placed Q&A - like 10 to 20 of them - will have most success. Atleast it does with my forums, since then the spam registrations stopped immeditely.

[Solid Signal]

I am very pleased with Spam Hammer from vbresults.com. There is a free version at vbulletin.org: http://www.vbulletin.org/forum/showthread.php?t=289463 designed for vB4 that does a great job with about 80% of spammers by checking registration times. I get about 250 spam registrations a day sometimes more and it was getting to be ridiculous. This product really worked for me.

If you upgrade to the paid version I find it blocks over 95% of spam registrations through a combination of factors. It adds an invisible field that XRumer tries to fill out, it check s registration times, DNS addresses, and uses a bunch of other tricks to turn XRumer against itself.

The developer is very responsive to comments and has been a pleasure to work with. I now spend about 5 minutes a day on spam management instead of about 2 hours.

On a side note, if you are plagued by registrations where the ICQ ID is filled out and the Biography field is one word: "Man" -- I paid this developer for a custom plugin to torpedo those specific registrations (I had over 2,000) and I want to release this to the community, please PM me with your e-mail and I will send it to you.