Taking action against SPAM

[Tim Wheatley]

We've already had a couple of SPAM posts. I'm installing an update which should check each new registration against records of every SPAM post made using a couple of databases. This should get rid of it...

If any of you suffer any issues because of this, which I can't see how you would... Please let me know via PM or the contact link at the bottom of the forum.

[RaceRay]

Hi Tim,

i recognized many many spamers in the x-sim forum in the past and tried many ways to prevent that issue, but all of them failed sooner or later. (For a short while we even checked every new member manually.) Anytime i created a very simple but sophisticated method which works nearly to 100% against automatic spam robots. Just add a simple question to the process of registration which only can be answered by a human with more or less inteligence

Just like that:

Are you human?

Believe it or not, a lot of users who try to register are not human. So, we ask that you answer this simple question to prove you are and we'll let you in!

What is 5 plus 7?

Look here to see what i mean:
http://www.x-simulator.de/forum/ucp.php?mode=register

Its very easy and it works! I am sure that you find such a mod for vBulletin. We use another forum system, otherwise i had send you my code.

Forget spam database or new captchas or anything like that. Spamers are too fast in creating new methods to break barrier like that and you īll only get busy by deleting posts and spamers.

[SeKa]

Fully agree with RaceRay, we use two levels of "inteligence captcha". Since this, we never have had a spamer. Just one level is enough to banning 98% of spammers. We had two levels, because the 10 cent workers from china, india, brasilia etc. made it necessary. Which we accomplished 100%. But this business is nearly history, I guess.

[Pandamasque]

My forum has a similar question
"Please type any 8 digit number"
As a result - lots of new users perplexed by the reason that was asked, not a single spam bot for a few years. Before that was implemented we had daily spam-bot registrations, although most of them could get themselves activated.

The truly great thing is that there is no single correct answer to the question. The settings specify 8 digits exactly and numbers only. I guess that makes it unintelligible for software designed to crack capcha.

[R Soul]

Another thing you could do is write the question on paper and scan it in. Computers aren't good at analysing handwriting, even when it's neat.