Forums

The forums ran from 2008-2020 and are now closed and viewable here as an archive.

Home Forums Other How are we doing on Spam?

  • This topic is empty.
Viewing 15 posts - 1 through 15 (of 22 total)
  • Author
    Posts
  • #24194
    Chris Coyier
    Keymaster

    So it’s been a few weeks now with the new thing in place to require manual activation of all accounts. It’s pretty crazy. There are about 20 new registrations a day and they all kinda look like spam to me but it’s really hard to tell. Since the new requirement, only maybe 5 people or so have emailed in for activation like I ask for.

    So… what’s the status report (mostly talking to the moderators here)? Has the spam stopped? Are you still getting any? Is the new requirement too strict? Are we driving people away or has activity remained OK?

    #53942
    Rob MacKay
    Participant

    I deleted one guy the other day who was selling handbags… but other than that nothin that I have seen, it seems to have been better…

    #53947
    Chris Coyier
    Keymaster

    There IS a CAPTCHA on the registration. Isn’t that crazy? So either the captcha has been cracked programatically or it’s literally outsourced to human beings who crack it.

    #53956
    Rob MacKay
    Participant

    No idea. The one guy I deleted the other day actually had a username that looked like a username…

    Is there a different CAPTCHA version that you could try? Maybe they have found a softspot in the one being used… Or maybe its just real people…

    #53968
    ikthius
    Member

    I banned 2 people on the 10th, they both had 5 posts in different forums, and they were all for powering up levels in wow gold crap.

    I think it has stopped more. but it may be more of a burden on your part to activate users???

    I think the activity has slightly slowed, but maybe people just have a life and I don’t :lol:

    ik

    #53831
    Chris Coyier
    Keymaster

    We’ll roll with it for a while longer and see. I don’t care about the burdon on me, no big deal at all. I just don’t want people to be turned off by it and not come back. The more the merrier…

    #53838
    Rob MacKay
    Participant
    "TheDoc" wrote:
    To be honest, if I sign up for a forum it’s usually because I want to make an immediate post. If I can’t right away, I will generally move on and completely forget the forum existed. Just my 2 cents there.

    mmm actually I would agree with that…

    #53841
    Chris Coyier
    Keymaster

    That’s exactly what I’m worried about. But at the same time a forum full of spam is almost worse. Especially when it’s nasty porn and posts of 10,000 links to WOW Gold crap.

    I’ll probably let this ride for a while longer and see if I can dig up some other spam prevention methods that can allow me to turn open registration back on.

    #53877
    Null-11
    Member

    You could give this one a try: http://bbantispam.com/atc/.

    It’s an easy to install mod for phpBB3 that asks a member a question upon logging in. It stops most spambots from being able to login and fill your forum with spam. It’s not perfect but it’s worth a shot.

    #54249
    nanochrome
    Member

    I know some things about PHPBB and i’ll list some ways to stop SPAM:
    Have A Custom Profile Field,call it Real Name, check Display on registration screen: and check Required field: (because most scripts See name and put there username).
    And also you can Some thing like Do you CSS-Tricks and make it Required so the bots don’t know want to put.

    That Should stop some spam.

    #50511
    ikthius
    Member

    I caught another 2 little buggers this morning, banned and deleted their posts….

    aaaawow had one post full of links
    shufei9910411 was more sneaky, they kust linked stupid text to a website, thet once reading and hovering over a link, you realises its wow gold crap again.

    the both of them had 2 posts each

    #56669
    TheDoc
    Member

    Things seem to be slipping a bit as of late by the looks of it. Any changes made within the past week that would cause that?

    #56687
    Matt
    Member

    Has the interactive Ajax idea just been outed, or is just not feasible?

    #56693
    Rob MacKay
    Participant

    yea I deleted and banned some a few days ago too – they are still appearing, nothing that cant be dealt with though…

    #56859
    Meshach
    Member

    Hey Chris,

    I would suggest you take a look at a reverse CAPTCHA.

    A couple links:

    http://www.ccs.uottawa.ca/webmaster/reverse-captcha.html
    http://b.lesseverything.com/2008/10/8/less-reverse-captcha

    Regards,
    Meshach

Viewing 15 posts - 1 through 15 (of 22 total)
  • The forum ‘Other’ is closed to new topics and replies.