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View Full Version : Temporary tightening of the rules for New Members



Stephen W. Meeley
19-Mar-2009, 05:50 PM
The amount of spam has increased to the point where we have instituted a policy where new members can not post in the Forums until we clear them to do so. Hopefully this will be a temporary restriction, but we will take whatever steps necessary to keep offensive materials from being posted.

Thanks in advance for your cooperation and understanding.

Garret Mott
19-Mar-2009, 05:55 PM
The amount of spam has increased to the point where we have instituted a policy where new members can not post in the Forums until we clear them to do so. Hopefully this will be a temporary restriction, but we will take whatever steps necessary to keep offensive materials from being posted.

Thanks in advance for your cooperation and understanding.

Thank you! Although there are probably those who'd like to see my posting ability restricted....

Clive Richmond
19-Mar-2009, 11:59 PM
Hi Stephen,

Excellent! Has my vote to make this a permanent policy change.

Pieter van Dieren
20-Mar-2009, 01:37 AM
Thank you! Although there are probably those who'd like to see my posting ability restricted....

For that vBulletin has the feature 'ignore user' :D

Pieter van Dieren
20-Mar-2009, 01:40 AM
http://www.pidi.nl/images/icons/wave.gif

Pak
20-Mar-2009, 04:43 AM
For that vBulletin has the feature 'ignore user' :D

Unfortunately, this only prevents you from seeing the content of the spammer's posts, not the fact that they have posted, which means that the New Posts list still fills up with spam.

I'm happy with the change!

Pieter van Dieren
20-Mar-2009, 05:05 AM
Hi Pak,

I know.
It was a response on Garret's joke.

Pak
20-Mar-2009, 05:06 AM
Oops...missed that! :o

TheCodeMonk
20-Mar-2009, 10:14 AM
Just a suggestion... I found a very easy way to kill off a lot of spam bots that hit forums. All you have to do is turn off captcha and then put a simple math problem in that the person has to answer. On both of my forums, I put in the signup process:

What is the answer to 2 + 5:

I made it a required field with only one possible answer. I was getting 5 - 10 spammers a day on the forum. Since I did this a year ago, I've had none.

Stephen W. Meeley
20-Mar-2009, 12:00 PM
Changing the registration process is one of the thngs we'll be looking at post-Synergy.

Nils G. Svedmyr
21-Mar-2009, 02:05 AM
Just a suggestion... I found a very easy way to kill off a lot of spam bots that hit forums. All you have to do is turn off captcha and then put a simple math problem in that the person has to answer. On both of my forums, I put in the signup process:

What is the answer to 2 + 5:

I made it a required field with only one possible answer. I was getting 5 - 10 spammers a day on the forum. Since I did this a year ago, I've had none.

Hi,

Out of interest; Why does not the captcha work to hold them off, while a simple math problem does?

Ary you saying that capthas are easy to automatically bypass? So if you have a web-site where users can e.g. send a support mail via a form, is it better to use a simple math test, rather than a captcha?

Best Regards,
Nils G. Svedmyr

Marco
21-Mar-2009, 08:51 AM
Hi Nils,

I run a PhpBB forum, and found a lot of suggestions that that the captcha, is 'solved' by sweatshops in the philipines.

I have no spammers for the last 2 years now (and 1000 regular users), with a simple question. A question for this forum could be:
What does the 'V' stand for in teh acronym VDF?

Cheers,
Marco

Pieter van Dieren
21-Mar-2009, 12:01 PM
What does the 'V' stand for in teh acronym VDF?

Can you get another question of you don't know the answer? :D

Mk@p3rfect
21-Mar-2009, 12:23 PM
I just googled the answer
http://www.abbreviations.com/VDF :rolleyes:

Garret Mott
21-Mar-2009, 01:31 PM
I just googled the answer
http://www.abbreviations.com/VDF :rolleyes:

I like Vulgar Display of Power, myself...:D

Nils G. Svedmyr
21-Mar-2009, 05:04 PM
Hi Nils,

I run a PhpBB forum, and found a lot of suggestions that that the captcha, is 'solved' by sweatshops in the philipines.

I have no spammers for the last 2 years now (and 1000 regular users), with a simple question. A question for this forum could be:
What does the 'V' stand for in teh acronym VDF?

Cheers,
Marco

Hi Marco,

Ok, I see. But what to do if you have a registration page with autoreply and/or a suggestion/support form, to avoid automated e-mail to that account? If you have a look at http://www.rdctools.com you'll see that QuizMaster Manager has been released as a free end-user product and the user can really be anybody that apply for e.g. a free license...

I had a captcha logic attached but it has temporarily been inactivated.

Thanks for any ideas.

Cheers,
Nils G.

TheCodeMonk
21-Mar-2009, 09:05 PM
Hi Nils,

I run a PhpBB forum, and found a lot of suggestions that that the captcha, is 'solved' by sweatshops in the philipines.

I have no spammers for the last 2 years now (and 1000 regular users), with a simple question. A question for this forum could be:
What does the 'V' stand for in teh acronym VDF?

Cheers,
Marco

That and there is software that can solve captcha pretty easy now. In order for captcha to even be somewhat usefull is to turn it to such an advanced algorithm that humans have a hard time reading them to answer them.

Nils G. Svedmyr
22-Mar-2009, 02:58 AM
That and there is software that can solve captcha pretty easy now. In order for captcha to even be somewhat usefull is to turn it to such an advanced algorithm that humans have a hard time reading them to answer them.

Wow, I didn't know such software existed. Do you know where I can get hold of such a program to run some tests?

Best Regards,
Nils G. Svedmyr

DaveR
22-Mar-2009, 07:08 PM
I like Vulgar Display of Power, myself...:D

even worse, it was FIREpower :eek:

Garret Mott
22-Mar-2009, 07:15 PM
even worse, it was FIREpower :eek:

Aw c'mon - ask any true, red blooded ammurrican - firepower ain't vulgar!

Igor van Houttum
23-Mar-2009, 03:18 AM
Do you know where I can get hold of such a program to run some tests?
On many forums such a question is grounds for an immediate ban. :p

Pak
23-Mar-2009, 04:48 AM
I could tell you, but then I'd have to kill you... :D

TheCodeMonk
23-Mar-2009, 08:27 AM
Wow, I didn't know such software existed. Do you know where I can get hold of such a program to run some tests?

Best Regards,
Nils G. Svedmyr

http://www.captchakiller.com/

That is a pay for application that is sold, supposedly, for blind people.

This is an open source solver written in OCaml: http://churchturing.org/captcha-dist/

I used that one a lot of test our captcha implementations and all of ours failed miserably. So I stopped using captcha and just went to simple question and answer registration.

Nils G. Svedmyr
23-Mar-2009, 08:55 AM
http://www.captchakiller.com/

That is a pay for application that is sold, supposedly, for blind people.

This is an open source solver written in OCaml: http://churchturing.org/captcha-dist/

I used that one a lot of test our captcha implementations and all of ours failed miserably. So I stopped using captcha and just went to simple question and answer registration.


Ok, thanks. That is enough evidence for me to not implement captchas- but rather try some other solution.

Regards,
Nils G. Svedmyr

Nils G. Svedmyr
23-Mar-2009, 08:58 AM
On many forums such a question is grounds for an immediate ban. :p

I was merely thinking running some tests on my own site - but I do get your point.

As answered to CodeMonk I'll try some other solution than capthas.

Regards,
Nils G.

Knut Sparhell
25-Mar-2009, 04:19 AM
Ok, thanks. That is enough evidence for me to not implement captchas- but rather try some other solution.

Look for Hashcash.

Nils G. Svedmyr
25-Mar-2009, 05:37 AM
Look for Hashcash.

Hi Knut,

I had a quick look at Hashcash and it looks very promising.

Thanks for the tip :)

Best regards,
Nils G.