I've implemented quite a few spam stop measures lately. Previously they've been relatively harmless but of late there has been posting of adult material. As you know this site is in theory open to all so our younger members must be protected. One of these measures is a random question/answer on the registration page, so I thought it might be fun to ask you guys what questions could be asked? They have to be questions that any human could answer, so we're not looking for the meaning of life, or the square root of pi! Best suggestion gets 3 months of subscriber status - enjoy!
Should we send the questions in a PM? Might as well not help the spammers by posting the questions/answers here. ;) Also, what format should the question be in to suit the registration page? Does the user have a multiple choice answer, or do they have a text box to type in their answer. If they type it in, then might need to allow for multiple types of answer (eg 3 or three would both be valid answers). Great idea and initiative Phunksta, much appreciated. :ok:
Perhaps it should be EU related? Something simple like, what is Mindark? Then you have multiple choices to choose from.
The problem with questions being EU or forum related might be that a new player ( real new player, not 2nd or 52nd avatar :hehe: ) might not know the answers yet. Although I agree something simple like what is Mindark they should be able to answer, as they should be aware of MA if they are visiting an EU forum. Mind you, I could think of some interesting answers regarding what Mindark is, and they would all be true. (imho) ;-)
Hmm.. Well, a big question is, are the registrations done by 100% bot, or is there a person filling in the forms?
How about CAPTCHA; those image verifications where a picture pops up with a set of scrambled and warped letters, and you must fill in those letters in a text box? Aren't those any good? Seen them at a lot of sites where one would think they have a high security at least. Although I guess the spammers will continue to develop new ways to break through, so there probably ain't no way to stay completely spam-free. Here's a few good tips about what could be used together with CAPTCHA to filter out most spams though: When CAPTCHA is not enough
Yes the registration form already uses re-Captcha, which made a big difference. I 'm sure some bots still get through it however, and there are still some saddos who have more time than sense and think it's a good idea to go spamming forums. :(
Great spam prevention idea imho... Also, this is a good point raised - . Maybe a vB filter could be used so that posts containing 'problem words' would be deleted. I googled the two possible solutions below, as I am by no means a vB expert yet... http://www.vbulletin.org/showthread.php?t=131568 http://www.forumdr.com/dealing-with-vbulletin-spam/748/
Oops yes missed that bit - but yes I've read similar posts before. Thanks though - it's good to keep reading what people think on the subject. I nearly went for the hidden/misleading field trick, but it requires manual modification of the vbulletin code, and I hate doing that cos I always forget and lose the changes :( This kind of thing has to be done using the vbulletin plugin/product system and I don't really understand that - yet! So, I thought this pre-prepared mod would do the trick for now!
Thanks nexus, I've implemented that 'stop spam' mod before, but took it out as it screwed the forum a few times, either dishing upwhite pages, or generally causing a nasty slowdown.
Yep, I thought that might have been thought of before, but wasn't sure. It seems like this is a tricky problem to solve, i wonder what vB tech support would suggest. They must be getting alot of stick from their customers on this...:-k
