New steps made to eliminate bots

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ninja
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New steps made to eliminate bots

Post by ninja » Tue Jul 28, 2009 1:34 pm

I know most people (except BBBB & NecroZombie) are probably sick of all the spambots that have gotten through the registration process. I have added a new field on the registration page that will hopefully eliminate these porn slinging, shoe selling dysfunction merchants once and for all.

Question: What does LOL stand for?

Answer: Laugh Out Loud

word
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Re: New steps made to eliminate bots

Post by Anomandari » Tue Jul 28, 2009 1:43 pm

Uh...
...and how is somebody new to Alvis supposed to know the answer at that point?
I had no idea what a FOIG is back when I was joining.
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Re: New steps made to eliminate bots

Post by Anomandari » Tue Jul 28, 2009 1:44 pm

Oh, nevermind. There's google. Just delete me.
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Re: New steps made to eliminate bots

Post by ninja » Tue Jul 28, 2009 1:54 pm

that's why I wrote the question and answer above.

edit: I don't care what the question is, I'll let the FOIG Inc team figure it out.
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Re: New steps made to eliminate bots

Post by Themicles » Tue Jul 28, 2009 9:32 pm

Have you guys tried switching the Visual Confirmation code for something stronger? The VC I use on CoPaP.org, Tairisnadur.com and Ysgard.org seems to work quite well. I realize these sites are far lower traffic than Avlis.org, but before I changed the VC, they were getting their share of spam bots. Can't say I know how one would integrate that particular one with phpBB3 though.
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Re: New steps made to eliminate bots

Post by krackq » Tue Jul 28, 2009 9:36 pm

There are a lot of complexity settings in the confirmation code by default that can be upped. When they were set on max, people complained of the inability to even see the captcha lettering, which I agree was pretty hard. I did add a small mod that changed the default backgrounds to varying images which is supposed to help.. but not enough. With the additions by Ninja, it should be interesting to see the results now. Also, the question may change to something simpler and more easily known by someone that wants to register. Maybe using LOL instead of FOIG
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Re: New steps made to eliminate bots

Post by whirlin_merlin » Tue Jul 28, 2009 9:39 pm

Yay! Bots are bad. *insert Terminator joke here*
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Re: New steps made to eliminate bots

Post by tid242 » Tue Jul 28, 2009 9:48 pm

yea, we actually ended up putting a field in our forum registration with a bunch of random questions with pre-defined answers:

"If I have six apples and give away 3, how many do I have left" sort of questions.

I think it eliminated about 99.99% of our spam-bot problem.

word.

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Re: New steps made to eliminate bots

Post by PsiOmega » Tue Jul 28, 2009 10:06 pm

Rename the current fields to something semi-bogus. Humans won't even notice unless they check the source of the page.
Add bogus fields which are made invisible to humans using CSS/Javascript. Bots will see these fields just fine.
Give these fields the name of the original fields before they were renamed. Bots will fill in these fields.
Reject all applications which have filled in the bogus fields because only bots are likely to see and fill them.
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Re: New steps made to eliminate bots

Post by solitude_peace2 » Tue Jul 28, 2009 10:59 pm

Ohhh... I like that....
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Re: New steps made to eliminate bots

Post by Demonseed » Tue Jul 28, 2009 11:49 pm

Allegedly Captcha is trivial to bypass these days but the hidden fields bit sounds inventively evil :)
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Re: New steps made to eliminate bots

Post by S?retur » Wed Jul 29, 2009 1:24 am

Demonseed wrote:Allegedly Captcha is trivial to bypass these days
Worse, professional spammers can simply pay humans to solve the captchas the bots collect. Last I saw, it was around $1.5-2 pr 1000, which makes for a lot of boards. Prices might have gone down even more by now :| Basically, captchas arre there to stop the most primitive/cheapest solutions, and nothing else.
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Re: New steps made to eliminate bots

Post by tid242 » Wed Jul 29, 2009 3:50 am

S?retur wrote:
Demonseed wrote:Allegedly Captcha is trivial to bypass these days
Worse, professional spammers can simply pay humans to solve the captchas the bots collect. Last I saw, it was around $1.5-2 pr 1000, which makes for a lot of boards. Prices might have gone down even more by now :| Basically, captchas arre there to stop the most primitive/cheapest solutions, and nothing else.

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid ... -Qb23Ni3Dw

Or they pay them with p0rn. This is an older video, but riveting nonetheless.

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Re: New steps made to eliminate bots

Post by Thelo » Fri Jul 31, 2009 8:42 pm

WTF???

Spambots? Why the f*** and why on Avlis?
Is there money to make?

Anyone checked Ebay for haste boots? :finger:

I just dont get it...
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Thelo
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Re: New steps made to eliminate bots

Post by Thelo » Fri Jul 31, 2009 8:45 pm

*slaps his forehead*

sorry, thought they made some bots for IG.... dont know if this even possible :flucht:

But i guess you ment the forum....
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Re: New steps made to eliminate bots

Post by tid242 » Sat Aug 01, 2009 3:15 am

Thelo wrote:*slaps his forehead*

sorry, thought they made some bots for IG.... dont know if this even possible :flucht:

But i guess you ment the forum....
yea, no place IG to enter your credit card info for cybering...

sorry duder.

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