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Preventing Forum Spam-bots?

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the evolved-beyond-captcha dept.

A concerned reader asks: "Recently it seems that forums have become the new target for spam bots advertising everything from porn to casinos. The forums that I admin are constantly harassed by these bots even though you must enter the visual confirmation code code (the picture with letters/numbers) as well as reply to an e-mail in order to register. This only started a few months ago so I'm suspecting that some new spam program was released that somehow gets around these anti-bot measures. How can I get rid of these annoying bots?"

4 of 124 comments (clear)

  1. One word: by MadDog+Bob-2 · · Score: 5, Informative

    kittens

  2. Please use correct terminology by Raul654 · · Score: 4, Informative

    For the record, those blurred/skewed letters and numbers are called a "Completely Automated Public Turing test to tell Computers and Humans Apart" - Captcha.

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    To make laws that man cannot, and will not obey, serves to bring all law into contempt.
    --E.C. Stanton
  3. Also... by Raul654 · · Score: 3, Informative

    ...it's patented. (and Turing is spinning in his grave...)

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    To make laws that man cannot, and will not obey, serves to bring all law into contempt.
    --E.C. Stanton
  4. Re:Grace period? by Donniedarkness · · Score: 3, Informative
    While this will keep some of the bots away, it will also cause the site to lose members. When I sign up on a forum, it is usually because I want to post RIGHT THEN. Of course, I'll probably continue to post on it.

    If a site makes me wait three days, though, I'm likely to forget about it in that time.

    Or were you talking about smaller grace periods? Perhaps 10 minutes? That might work well.

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