Need better bot filters

[The_Intruder]

Are these bots real people? What is their purpose for being here?

[Bluecast]

Are these bots real people? What is their purpose for being here?

Some are some are not. They come here to advertise crap no one wants.
Some just come to maybe spread a virus. Never respond to bot posts/topics or click on links they post.

[The_Intruder]

Are these bots real people? What is their purpose for being here?

Some are some are not. They come here to advertise crap no one wants.
Some just come to maybe spread a virus. Never respond to bot posts/topics or click on links they post.

I remember receiving a few PM messeges by someone about a virus and to click a link. It must be from the Bots then.

[onizuka]

you could have them validate their account by sending them a confirmation email, this is probably the reason why so many unmanned ones get through

[Bluecast]

you could have them validate their account by sending them a confirmation email, this is probably the reason why so many unmanned ones get through

Yeah Yama had that for a while then stopped. I guess he got tired of his inbox being so full.

[onizuka]

you could have them validate their account by sending them a confirmation email, this is probably the reason why so many unmanned ones get through

Yeah Yama had that for a while then stopped. I guess he got tired of his inbox being so full.

I'm pretty sure most forums use an automatic system where a scripted basic AI sends the email as soon as the person has registered
I would highly recommend it as it is easy to make a script that bypasses the captcha

[LawXiu]

you could have them validate their account by sending them a confirmation email, this is probably the reason why so many unmanned ones get through

Yeah Yama had that for a while then stopped. I guess he got tired of his inbox being so full.

Maybe when he gets enough donations he can start doing it again or delegate the job to a mod. We have plenty of them.

[Yama]

you could have them validate their account by sending them a confirmation email, this is probably the reason why so many unmanned ones get through

Yeah Yama had that for a while then stopped. I guess he got tired of his inbox being so full.

Maybe when he gets enough donations he can start doing it again or delegate the job to a mod. We have plenty of them.

Has nothing to do with donations, nobody on the staff wants the job of sorting through over one thousand e-mails a day. At that point, you can't even tell when there are two or three real members involved. Trust me. Despite a few slipping through, judging by the amount of e-mails I received, hundreds a day are being stopped. We'll work on further improving it, but it's doing pretty good considering. We'll figure something out.

[LawXiu]

Hundreds a day? Don't blame you for stopping. When you put it like that one or two getting in doesn't seem so bad.

[Yama]

Hundreds a day? Don't blame you for stopping. When you put it like that one or two getting in doesn't seem so bad.

Yeah, if this place was set to zero confirmation it'd pretty much be in hell and back already. Guess it has to do with how long the site has been around.

[Bluecast]

Hundreds a day? Don't blame you for stopping. When you put it like that one or two getting in doesn't seem so bad.

Yeah, if this place was set to zero confirmation it'd pretty much be in hell and back already. Guess it has to do with how long the site has been around.

I got htrough
viewtopic.php?f=25&t=43040

[LawXiu]

I always thought you was a clone of OL but they changed the colour.

[Bluecast]

funny. When I notice a new member changing profile settings it's usually a bot but clear when it says it's age is between 40-50. Last one I just did looked more legit so I did a full IP check and found the adress it belonged to went to google maps and saw street view it's a big old business advertising. Sorry just thought that was amusing how I found out.

[Master Kyodai]

I run a few forums with a friend from Canada. We were using asp based snitz forums and barely had any issues since we introduced a new dropdown menu "Are you a bot?" that is on "yes" by default. Never had any bots after that, they all seem to be confused by the additional field.


Then we installed phpBB3 on some php based website for a new forum and kinda neglected the project for a while. After a few month we already had 20,000 (IN WORDS: TWENTY THOUSAND) bots that had joined and spammed the forum to an amount where our hosting company gave us a deadline to clean up the database as it was over the maximum limit.


Because we did not want to get into changing the registration page again we were like "OK there must be a solution its not like we're the only ones using phpbb3".


The solution was actually quite simple. PHPBB3 by default has an option to ask an "Anti-bot question" that you define yourself. You can define as many questions (And of course matching answers) as you want and the person to register has to answer these in order to register.


I made like 5 different basic questions that are all like "If you have 7 bottles of beer and drink 2 then how many have you got left?" (correct accepted answers: Five or 5). SInce we did this we have not had a single bot registered at our phpbb3 forums.

[Peter]

A lot of sites have features like this to prevent bots, which seems to work. In regards to here, it seems to be just a case of implementation?