Spammers and spambots

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On 23/06/2011 at 03:00, xxxxxxxx wrote:

The forum seems to be plagued recently with these idiots. There was one a few days ago with a huge post including images and all. I'm not normally in favour of things like captcha for validating new members but it's getting increasingly annoying seeing new posts here which are just garbage.

Is there something that can be done at least to reduce this problem?

Steve

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On 24/06/2011 at 09:16, xxxxxxxx wrote:

According to the forum software specs, there are all sorts of anti-bot/anti-spam options (including CAPTCHA).

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On 25/06/2011 at 15:00, xxxxxxxx wrote:

It seems that the forum does use captcha on registering, I just tried it, so either the bots are getting round it or a human with nothing better to do is registering. Either way, there seems to be a lot more here than on various other forums.

In fact I see another one is at it right now.

(Edit - done some reading around this and it seems that circumventing captchas provides some employment for folks in the third world, so it's an ill wind, etc.)

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On 25/06/2011 at 16:21, xxxxxxxx wrote:

Bots can also circumvent some captcha but, yeah, there are people, similar to your typical email spammer, who get paid to do this (annoy us with their unwanted solicitations).

I'm using BBPress and it is particularly subject to bot registration attempts (even with captcha!).  Probably getting 30 or more per day.  Luckily, only members whom I approve can post.  And it is a simple matter to delete the registrations. :)

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On 25/06/2011 at 19:43, xxxxxxxx wrote:

Sorry about the increasing spamming. We have to think about ways to make it less prone to spamming.

cheers,
Matthias

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On 26/06/2011 at 04:13, xxxxxxxx wrote:

No need to apologise Matthias, it's not your or Maxon's fault. Just the way things are, I guess. But anything to make things harder for these people would be good.

Steve

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On 06/07/2011 at 10:12, xxxxxxxx wrote:

If you must retain automatic registration (instead of manual approval) then the best methods seem to be a combination of CAPTCHA and so-called "Human Test" measures.  I've implemented the latter and the bot registrations went to 0 (Yay!).