Spam User Registrations

[Craig]

Hey all. The moderators have been working a good bit of overtime over the past couple of weeks due to the huge increase in spam bot registrations on the forum.

It looks like the reCaptcha anti-spam services have been compromised:
http://arstechnica.com/security/news...il-hotmail.ars

This means that we'll see a lot more of these registrations until some counter-measures can be put into place.

Part of that will be moving to some other human verification systems to (hopefully) combat the spam-bot registrations.

As members of the community, just keep doing what you're doing and use the report button to flag suspicious posts.

Thanks,
Craig

[edew]

How about a moratorium of new registrations for about a week or so.

[Purple Fencer]

How about a moratorium of new registrations for about a week or so.

Might keep people away if they can't register. How about allowing registration, but not ACTIVATION of the account until it can be verified that it's a live body out there.

Just send a notice about the spambot and the need for additional verification with that activation notice and I think people will understand. You can remove that additional verification once the auto filter comes back.

[Gav]

There are lots of optoons. New counter measures or even just requiring a moderator to authorise accounts before we go down the road of a moratorium. We'll do what we can in the meantime. The upsurge is flipping annoying.

[Inquartata]

The price of success, I suppose. Thanks for your efforts in this regard.

[Alexander Kai]

I'm mildly uneducated about the subject but what about asking for a cell phone number? You could then text an alpha numeric code to that person and then they would input it. I understand that such a service may cost money, but I feel that it would be effective.

You could also deny anyone who had used the same number twice, which would help prevent one person from having multiple accounts (unless they have multiple phones?) Spammers attempting to make thousands of accounts would then only be limited to 2 or 3 (and that's IF they were not deterred in the first place.)

[noodle]

you'll also never be able to beat a spammer who is an actual person trying to spam contextually and not just a bot. we've had a few of those lately, as well.

[Craig]

We've changed part of the registration process so that it needs a human sitting on the keyboard to get it. That seems to have stemmed the tide of bot registrations in the last 24 hours.

[Inquartata]

I'm mildly uneducated about the subject but what about asking for a cell phone number?

Some people don't have them. Or want them.

[Zhais]

or those that have cell phones, but no SMS capability enabled

We've changed part of the registration process so that it needs a human sitting on the keyboard to get it. That seems to have stemmed the tide of bot registrations in the last 24 hours.

I love the 'are you a spammer?' question.

[Empty Wallet]

Or have cell phones but live in an entirely different part of the world--$$$$ .

Previously I have suggested that new registrants be prevented from starting threads until they have made a minimum number of posts. Other forums (fora) I use have this in place, they also use vBulletin.

[Beloit Fencer of Old]

Or have cell phones but live in an entirely different part of the world--$$$$ .

Previously I have suggested that new registrants be prevented from starting threads until they have made a minimum number of posts. Other forums (fora) I use have this in place, they also use vBulletin.

This is great in theory, until you think about the number of people who lurk to get information for years. What happens if one of them then has an issue worthy of a thread? They would have to start posting nonsense in one of Greybeard's threads just to come up with the proper post count.

[Alexander Kai]

you'll also never be able to beat a spammer who is an actual person trying to spam contextually and not just a bot. we've had a few of those lately, as well.

http://xkcd.com/810/

[Craig]

http://xkcd.com/810/

Yeah - Still waiting for that one.

[VorpalCat]

This is great in theory, until you think about the number of people who lurk to get information for years. What happens if one of them then has an issue worthy of a thread? They would have to start posting nonsense in one of Greybeard's threads just to come up with the proper post count.

That's what the Water Cooler is for.

[noodle]

Yeah - Still waiting for that one.

you know, its kind of doable.