Topic: Is it Just Me, Or...

[OranBerrySandvich]

Is it just me, or are spambots on the rise? Granted, the rise is so small it's hard to notic, but I've seen two on at the same time as of this post. I'm not sure if it's someone being stupid or the security lets a few slip through, but it still niggles at me.
Perhaps there should be a "Repor User" button as well as a "Report Post" button? I know people could PM a senior figure about it, but it'd be a touch more convenient to my mind... Then again, the amount of them overall is small, so I'm split.

[IvanWolf♥]

I've noticed this too... I got on today and there were about... oh, three new topics posted with links to other sites? I find it really annoying :/
I think, even though the amount is small, if it's seriously bothering someone it should at least be worth talking over.
Edit: Just found another...

[Joeno]

Unfortunately, we're at the point where we can't do more - we've got protection to make it harder for them to sign up, but any method like that we could implement has alraedy been cracked, even a few basic ones we worked on ourselves didn't make a difference.

Report the posts when you see them, and we'll deal with them. That's all that can be done.

[Kona]

As Joeno says, report them. It's the easiest way to get them removed. The only problem is when they post 2 or more posts, you have to wait 1 minute between reports. Would a good way to counter that be to give users who regularly report sensibly no/ a lower limit on reports?

[Joeno]

I don't think it easily allows us to do that.

[Kona]

Damn. I wasn't too sure of the idea, but thought I should've mentioned it. Is there anyway you could make it so accounts under 10 or so posts have to wait 10 minutes or so before they can post, or between each post or something like that? It's not the best idea though, as it'd hurt legit users more to be honest.

[Joeno]

With the way these bots post, that wouldn't make a difference.

[Trainer Dave]

From what I'm aware of, there may be an SMF addon which could add a simple logic question to the registration form (E.g. "how many vowels in the word 'break'"?). I hear those are pretty effective?

[Joeno]

We had those. They didn't work too well.

[kr9q]

How about a 'guess the Pokemon' like on some of the websites I go on namely GPX+. Or both Ideas.  If not that how about when you get to a certain number of posts you can start posting links. I know the legit users would have to wait to start posting links but, the Spambots would most likely give up trying to post links and there would be less of them.

[Trainer Dave]

I suppose the key to defeating a spambot is to find a question that only a human can understand (and easily answer it at that). Simple maths questions used to be good, but nowadays I think the programs can spot and answer them, it probably needs to be something easy to answer, perhaps "What color is the top half of the pokeball in <this> picture?" or something similar.

[Nightmare Eater]

Maybe something like "name a pokemon with a base stat of ---" or something like that. I don't know.

[kr9q]

I suppose the key to defeating a spambot is to find a question that only a human can understand (and easily answer it at that). Simple maths questions used to be good, but nowadays I think the programs can spot and answer them, it probably needs to be something easy to answer, perhaps "What color is the top half of the pokeball in <this> picture?" or something similar.

Yea. Thats a good idea (The Pokeball one).
Another Idea:
'Name who sings this song'
You put some lyrcis down and then the person who is signing up has to put the name of the person who sings that song.

[Richard and Blaziken]

The questions shouldn't be something annoying that you have to research, such as the above two examples, it'd put people off who really just want to register for the forum.

[Joeno]

Except that if you don't know the song, you can't answer the question and register... not what we want. Same thing with base stats. And images... we can't do that with the SMF software, and SMF plugins so far are really limited... and easily broken as some bots will know them already.

I've added a few really simple questions, but as I said, we had them before and they did nearly nothing. Don't expect much from them this time.

We can't restrict posting links by post count, SMF doesn't allow it. And as the links are usually elsewhere (signatures, the link field, any other field they can use), it wouldn't help much.