omega79 Posted April 22, 2014 Share Posted April 22, 2014 Maybe restrict posting URLs to people who have at least 4 Posts. then there is this project to block some robots even b4 they register http://www.projecthoneypot.org/httpbl.php and this http://www.stopforumspam.com/ when i was the owner of a vbb board there was a plugin where it allowed me to upload custom pictures with custom questions/answers ... if you do not ask questions like "how many", "what color" or "yes or no" it will block a lot of bots ... if something like that is available for phpbb Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Valor Posted April 22, 2014 Share Posted April 22, 2014 Ask a C&C related question, like "who is the leader of Nod?" Though I fear even bots may be able to answer this via automated Google searching. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
omega79 Posted April 22, 2014 Author Share Posted April 22, 2014 there could be pictures of renegadex units and buildings ... "what do you see on the picture?" but that might be too much of an insider question for newbies Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mattrrrrrrrrr Posted April 23, 2014 Share Posted April 23, 2014 But without the spam, we wouldn't get memorable quotes such as this: "You are able to the choice is yours inside a roaster inside your the oven or for people that really want a great roast." -a3nb3wc5l, 23 Apr 2014 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
omega79 Posted April 23, 2014 Author Share Posted April 23, 2014 maybe block other languages like japanese, thai, chinese, korean, hebrew, Cyrillic and such ... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Prof.Koni Posted April 23, 2014 Share Posted April 23, 2014 there could be pictures of renegadex units and buildings ..."what do you see on the picture?" but that might be too much of an insider question for newbies You could put 2 answers there. If you see a picture of a GDI Soldier, the question could be like: "What do you see in the picture?" a) GDI Soldier b) Nod Flame-Tank Then the answer would be quite simple and understandably. Greetings, Koni Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jam Posted April 23, 2014 Share Posted April 23, 2014 Thank guys. We've adopted reCaptcha to filter out bots and hope this will prove to be effective. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
omega79 Posted April 23, 2014 Author Share Posted April 23, 2014 lets hope so thank you Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
XD_ERROR_XD Posted April 23, 2014 Share Posted April 23, 2014 But without the spam, we wouldn't get memorable quotes such as this:"You are able to the choice is yours inside a roaster inside your the oven or for people that really want a great roast." -a3nb3wc5l, 23 Apr 2014 So inspirational... If the sentence made any sense to me, lol. But yeah, i've seen a few bots here since i registered here. I usually report them and just ignore them afterwards, no reason to publicise it by putting it at the front of the forum. I don't want any innocent readers to accidentaly press the link on their posts, leading to having unknowingly getting all kinds of malware downloaded on their PC. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
omega79 Posted April 24, 2014 Author Share Posted April 24, 2014 seems not to work huh feels like there more bots now Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Glacious Posted April 24, 2014 Share Posted April 24, 2014 Was about to say the same, seems worse now Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Eagle XI Posted April 24, 2014 Share Posted April 24, 2014 Nowadays those spam bots are very advanced and are bound to pass simple solutions like captchas or the like. To fix the problem you have to go deeper, even then you'd still have to squish the occasional uber-bot that managed to pass everything despite all odds. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
omega79 Posted April 24, 2014 Author Share Posted April 24, 2014 If you have your own pictures and ask questions that need a different answer than yes/no, numbers or colors ... something like that: Possible Questions and answers: Q: What is the cat doing? A: sleeping / relaxing Q: What animal is on the picture? A: cat Q: What Instrument is the cat sleeping on? A: Guitar Q: What material is the guitar made of? A: wood So if you have like 5 Pictures and 4-5 Questions to each you have 20-25 combinations ... I did use a system like that when i did run a vbb4 board ... after activation of this we never had any spam anymore ... any new registered user gets only 1 question ofcourse, and an other one if the answer is incorrect Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Agent Posted April 24, 2014 Share Posted April 24, 2014 A Q&A system can be very effective as an anti-bot mechanism. The best questions will generally have a unique question/answer to the website. Example for a gaming community (and what I used): "Name a game we host a server for." - and this would accept many answers. Example for Renegade-X: "Name the game developed here." - which could accept RenX / RenegadeX / Renegade-X (though this one would probably be the most answered by bots) / Ren-X Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
omega79 Posted April 24, 2014 Author Share Posted April 24, 2014 thats a good idea too ... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DrummerX Posted April 25, 2014 Share Posted April 25, 2014 A Q&A system can be very effective as an anti-bot mechanism. The best questions will generally have a unique question/answer to the website.Example for a gaming community (and what I used): "Name a game we host a server for." - and this would accept many answers. Example for Renegade-X: "Name the game developed here." - which could accept RenX / RenegadeX / Renegade-X (though this one would probably be the most answered by bots) / Ren-X Sorry about the bots guys, we are in progress of fixing the situation. Although no system is perfect but you can set up the system to require human input to complete. The picture one is great, but takes some time to set up on an old system like this. We're back to using a Q&A system like before but using a question that can't be answered by any known bots. Bots now-a-day can use things like google to look up the question and post the answer based on the first few outputs or use something like clever bot that can answer some weird questions like "What's the largest river in South America". So the current questions is along the lines of "What is the first two letters and the second to last letter of Omega?" and of the course, the answer would be OMG (not caps sensative or space sensative so O M G would be acceptable) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
omega79 Posted April 25, 2014 Author Share Posted April 25, 2014 the benefit of the picture thing is that it can not be googled ... specially if you use pictures you took yourself I remember that I lined up certain fruits or objects in a picture and asked something like "name the object on the right" or "name the fruit left of the bottle" Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Generalcamo Posted April 27, 2014 Share Posted April 27, 2014 Ask a C&C related question, like "who is the leader of Nod?"Though I fear even bots may be able to answer this via automated Google searching. Funny enough, I googled this and it came out with Hassan, which is only partially correct... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
N3tRunn3r Posted April 29, 2014 Share Posted April 29, 2014 Forum SpamBots are back... omfg... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
omega79 Posted April 29, 2014 Author Share Posted April 29, 2014 maybe get some moderators aswell ... i noticed that there are almost no moderators Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SFJake Posted April 29, 2014 Share Posted April 29, 2014 Its a painful day job to clean spam via moderators, though. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
omega79 Posted April 29, 2014 Author Share Posted April 29, 2014 1 click ... more easy than reporting them Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Truxa Posted April 29, 2014 Share Posted April 29, 2014 1 click ... more easy than reporting them 1 click delete button for moderators, but they aren't online 100% of the time 24/7. Perhaps as an immergency method, get a voting system up for posts like upvoting and downvoting. That way, forum users could downvote the spam when they encounter them and mods can spot those downvoted posts in a list. After which they remove it instead of scouring the entire forum continuously whenever there is a new post. On the bright side, upvoting/downvoting also reduces the amount of rubbish people say on these forums as an act of filtering out the good tips and bad tips for the Devs. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Eagle XI Posted April 30, 2014 Share Posted April 30, 2014 Most of the bots tend to register with an ICQ number that is setup by their owner as a means to monitor them. If you can setup a system that autobans anyone who set up an ICQ number in their profile could lighten the problem a bit. Who the fuck still uses ICQ anyways ? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
omega79 Posted April 30, 2014 Author Share Posted April 30, 2014 i would volunteer as a spamguard ... only delete spamposts ... no demand on any internals Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RoundShades Posted April 30, 2014 Share Posted April 30, 2014 i would volunteer as a spamguard ...only delete spamposts ... no demand on any internals Ditto. If you gave me power to delete posts, you can obviously track it, and give me the boot the first slip up. I would literally only delete spam posts, I wouldn't even delete haenous vulgur or otherwise explicative user posts as those are fewer and can sit with a report for a real moderator to delete. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Truxa Posted May 8, 2014 Share Posted May 8, 2014 A recent forum I've been on had a spam guard that worked perfectly! As it is a Dutch forum, the forum asks a question about a shadow of an animal. If entered correctly, the post made it to the forum. This feature was also on every reply you make on a topic, not just making an account or registering. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
omega79 Posted May 8, 2014 Author Share Posted May 8, 2014 Asking for colours can easy be guessed by bots, same like numbers. Questions for every single post or reply would turn a lot people off, me too ... not just the bots it is too much and not needed Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Truxa Posted May 8, 2014 Share Posted May 8, 2014 Well, if thats the case, than thats also some sort of "bullsh%t" filter not worth the time posting unless you realy think it's worth the time. I'm not talking about colour, just the name of an animal portrayed in a shadow as a question Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Agent Posted May 8, 2014 Share Posted May 8, 2014 Well, if thats the case, than thats also some sort of "bullsh%t" filter not worth the time posting unless you realy think it's worth the time.I'm not talking about colour, just the name of an animal portrayed in a shadow as a question It'd be just as effective and less annoying to have it registration-only, as opposed to per-post. I already get irritated when websites require a question during the login process. I just wouldn't post if I had to fill something in every time -- it's not that it's difficult, it's just a repetitive task that gets very old, very fast. At that point I'd just shove any/all opinions into the IRC channel(s), which I used to do to a degree anyways until the DevBot disappeared. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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