Many robot attempted registrations

[Leonardg]

Am getting a lot of attempted registrations via what I think are automated systems. A giveaway is that they always fill the Company field with the word: Man

Our system requires manual user moderation before any one gets full Registered status, still I would like to be able to just ban anyone with Company = Man

How can I do this?

[Steve Machol]

Sorry, there is no function to do this. This requires modifying the code. We cannot officially support code modifications or forums running modified code, however you can try searching or asking for help with this over at www.vbulletin.org.

[Leonardg]

Thank you. I rather not go with un-supportable customizations. I will live with it.

[cheat-master30]

If using the image verification, turn the settings up to max. I'd personally recommend using a different method of verification personally though, one which the bots haven't yet attempted to beat. Oh, and isn't there some kind of Regex feature in vBulletin by default for this stuff?

[Leonardg]

Thank you for your reply. We are not using image verification, but personal (manual) moderation of all registrants as we have a 'closed'
forum: only employees and clients are allowed.

Regex?

[peterska2]

regex is a regular expression which will only accept certain pre-determined answers for the profile field. So if for example your expected answers are:

dog
cat
bird
fish

Then you can set a regex to only accept these answers so if someone enters snake they will get an error in the registration form and have to correct it.

You can also block a specific word or words in the field, so as you have said that they always enter "Man" you can use this regex

(?!^Man$|^man$)^.+$

Enter this in the regular expression box by going to

AdminCP > User Profile Fields > User Profile Field Manager > Company > Edit > Regular Expression

It is important that it is entered exactly as above as getting it wrong will cause it to not work.

[Leonardg]

That worked pretty well, thank you. I may have to change the text of the error message that vBulletin sends out about a bad Company field to throw them off. Unless these 'robots' are not so smart.

Thanks again, Kerry-Anne!