Phpbb3: spam problems

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[Zudane]

Make sure you also have them required at registration - And if you are using phpbb3 (I'm not sure about phpbb2) make sure you have it set to not show - or else you have fairly random looking questions showing in your user's profiles.
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[Rextreme]

Okay thanks- I hadn't thought of that.

[Zudane]

I missed the option for it on both and was annoyed to see them showing up on profiles, lol.

Name: Joe
Are you human? Yes
What is 5+6? 11

Ya, that's what I want profiles to look like  
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[Rextreme]

Your sum is easier than mine....but I have given the option of one number either side...just in case. LOL


ETA..Very nice forum you have there.  

[Zina2008]

Depending on what your Forum is about, you can even make the "spambusting" questions useful for information-gathering.

If you had a car forum, say, you could ask what the applicant's favourite model was, or even colour - bots aren't likely to have an opinion.

And if you have a family history forum, you could ask for the relevant surname. Bots don't have surnames.

[admin (no pm's please)]

Some bots will fill in a value, hence the idea of two fields to be filled.

One a radio field that may be missed by a bot, and one a field will a numeric answer the system can check on for you.

So favorite car/colour is not good for this.
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[Zina2008]

No, I take your point - cars are probably too weel-kent to work. I don't use cars myself.

You could do a foodie thing - baked or fried? Rotisserie or flambe? That might be safer, with buttons.

Best if you have a really obscure subject, though. It would work with villages of the Outer Hebrides, probably.

[Zudane]

What admin was referring to.. is you need something more than just fields that need to be filled in or boxes that need to be checked.

What you need is that if a bot spots a field, it may put in a 'guess' to what the answer might be, if the question is simply an opinion, then it would get it 'correct'.  If the question is something with a definitive answer, then the bots 'guess' wouldn't be correct and the bot is denied (unless it got lucky)
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[RebeckaJayne]

We seem to have an influx of spammers trying to get onto our site at the moment.

Followed the steps in this topic to try and catch them and it's working.
We added two required fields on registration,The first being Date of Birth and the second Location.
They still apply to join but the give away is the results.....

Date of Birth:   01 Jan 1909
Location: Canada

The country and date of birth varies but it's always the same year.

We now register all details from these applicants on this site


Stop Forum Spam

and then all we do is ban by IP.
Working well so far.
Thanks for the advice.
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[Zudane]

Giving the choice of just added words they can fill in is simple.  You want abnormal questions, things that a person would not tell a computer to look for.

A simple math question, "What is 4 + 1" and the answer being a number field with 5 as the correct answer, and the default being 82.

And then a dropdown box of "are you a human" with the answers yes and no, and the default being no.

This way a bot would not attempt to answer both of those, or would fail to answer them correctly, and would be denied access.
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[RebeckaJayne]

Thanks for the advice Zudane.
Will have a go at that today.
Didn't mind having to sift through them but it seems like that way would be easier.
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[Lord of the Norge]

[admin (no pm's please)]

Check the field options, show us a screenshot.
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[Lord of the Norge]

[Zina2008]

For the numerical one, the default must be the wrong answer.

A human will change it to the correct figure, but a bot is likely to accept the value given.

For the same reason, the lowest and highest acceptable figures must be the same right answer. Or give them a small range if your potential new members can't count, or have a silly sense of humour!

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