Getting lot of spam even after enabling image verification

[njkhatri]

I am using vBulletin 3.5.4.

I have enabled the image verification for new users. And I when log into the control panel, I see the image also. That means image verification is working.

However, I still get lots and lots of spammers users every day and it consumes lot of time to clean them up.

I am wondering how come so many spammers are able to register even after image verification? I am wondering whether spammers have been able to hack the image verification module and somehow able to recognize the images programatically!

[Steve Machol]

Image verification doesn't stop real people from registering and spamming. Please see this:

How to Reduce Spam and Registration Bots

[njkhatri]

Other than upgrading to 3.6.x (which I can't), I have tried everything that is mentioned there and still get lot of spam.

[Jose Amaral Rego]

You really can not stop human posting, unless you have them all your members on moderation. Until they make it illegal to spam websites, you are out of luck. This is why you would need moderators for and that is why you are an adminastrator. You just need to be active in your forum and not be absent.

[slappy]

You can create a usergroup which contains all newly registered users until they reach a certain number of posts and sent those new users to moderation. After they reach a certain number of posts, they can be promoted to a usergroup which does not require moderation.

This way, a spammer can not get his/her first post spam seen in the Forum until moderated and they stay in moderation until they have X posts. This would help discourage their making one or two "innocent" posts just to get a chance to spam.

Regards,

[Jose Amaral Rego]

You can create a usergroup which contains all newly registered users until they reach a certain number of posts and sent those new users to moderation. After they reach a certain number of posts, they can be promoted to a usergroup which does not require moderation.

This way, a spammer can not get his/her first post spam seen in the Forum until moderated and they stay in moderation until they have X posts. This would help discourage their making one or two "innocent" posts just to get a chance to spam.

Regards,

This will not stop spamming, as it is easy enough to figure out if you are moderated til set amount and spam after set amount. I do this on my test site, as I do have software to run auto posting after human login. You need to set it very high post count to discourage spam posters and make sure they can not edit post after certain set time.