Spam attacks

[Bram]

Not sure if you guys suffer from the same but since a few months we are having a serious spam issue.

Before we had absolutely zero spam because of our human verification question. For some reason these bots (or humans) know how to bypass this question and simply fill in the correct answer (what is the fist letter of the word bla bla bla etc etc you know ).

Do you guys have the same on your boards?

[Steve Machol]

Please see this thread for things you can do to fight spam: How to Reduce Spam and Registration Bots

[beishe8]

Not sure if you guys suffer from the same but since a few months we are having a serious spam issue.

Before we had absolutely zero spam because of our human verification question. For some reason these bots (or humans) know how to bypass this question and simply fill in the correct answer (what is the fist letter of the word bla bla bla etc etc you know ).

Do you guys have the same on your boards?

No,we don't.
Create some new questions,the answers should be more than one character long.

[Bram]

We have always used the "can you spell check" before. I have now removed this custom profile field and tried to enable recaptcha. Problem it doesnt show up on the registration page at all. (same for the other human verification stuff).

Do i need to revert something?

[Bram]

problem solved: i unticked the human verification option once under settings, works now thanks

[BirdOPrey5]

recaptcha is far worse than Q & A in stopping bots.

[Bram]

Recaptcha eventually didnt work. Now back to multiple questions and doesn't help either.

Maybe I should make a question like: Are you a human spammer from India? And "Yes" would instaban the account permanently.

Seriously, this spam is getting worser by the day.

[beishe8]

Recaptcha eventually didnt work. Now back to multiple questions and doesn't help either.

Maybe I should make a question like: Are you a human spammer from India? And "Yes" would instaban the account permanently.

Seriously, this spam is getting worser by the day.

If you stick to your system of "(what is the fist letter of the word bla bla bla etc etc you know)" than make it a little more difficult:
Question: What are the last three characters of the word hallelujah.
Answer:jah

No quotes,no highlighting of the word.

[Bram]

I can make mathematic questions that even Dr Sheldon Cooper himself can't solve and they will still come through

Saw tht vbulletin.org was affected by it also last night. Must be human spammers. Is there any legal actions an admin can take against this?

[Wayne Luke]

You would have to consult a lawyer to determine if there are legal actions available to you.

[beishe8]

I can make mathematic questions that even Dr Sheldon Cooper himself can't solve and they will still come through

Unfortunately there is no software on the market which would prevent spamming in an open forum,without some efforts to reduce it.

[1QuickSI]

vbulletin really really needs to work with the various blacklist sites when handeling user registrations. This modification has been a godsend for me as I get roughyl 1,000 SPAM registrations every 3 days

http://www.vbulletin.org/forum/showthread.php?t=248042

[Bram]

I modders can make such modifications why can't IB make it standard for each forum software. Got absolutely zero spam on my other forum. Really don't get it.

[Wayne Luke]

There are a lot of things in the works at any given time and each thing has to have priority set. Now each customer has their own priority on what needs to change or get fixed. The developers try to do their best but can't simply work on everything at once. If it isn't in Jira, then add it. It will get looked at and could be included in the future. Until then, the system was designed so addons like the one above could be created to fill those holes and help everyone reach fill their #1 priority. I suggest using it if it helps you. You'll be a step ahead in the game.

[Muddles]

I just block all countries except the ones I have members in with an htaccess file. Don't get any spam at all now