I thinl lots of Bots are registering

[silent_thunder]

Fergal I notice a lot of bots.I think its time you changed the captcha. Or the forum will be flodded with uselss bot registrations

[Fergal]

Yes Silent, unfortunately it is true. I will look into the captcha, to see if it can be improved. It's difficult to know why they register, they don't get anything from the registration. Some of the forum settings were changed recently and bots cannot get signature links or home page links in their member profile. Yet they keep coming.

Email verification is required upon registration, but that alone is not enough to stop them.

We also have a mod installed to stop bot registration. It worked for quite some time, but now it would appear that the bots have found a way round it. It's a never ending battle, but on the positive side, we no longer have to see their spam posts or links.

Thanks for your concern Silent and I will look into it to see what can be done.

[Nazreen]

Do we have a spam eliminator mod in BAF, Fergal? I've been reading on some ways to eliminate spam in forums and I think that this is one of the best ways in preventing spams here. If there are any posts that are made in about 5 minutes after the posting area window has been generated, it blocks the post.

[scifi]

http://www.google.co.in/search?hl=en&q=mob+colouring+for+LG+Chocolate&btnG=Google+Search&meta=

Hello Fergal..I have noticed an unusual thing about the thread "Mob colouring for LG Chocolates". I have just google the thread & you can see yourself the result on the link provided above. Nearly all the results contains this thread on different forums, the thing to be noticed is that all have one post with same matter with different username...
Do you thing it is some kinds of BOT..?????

[Fergal]

Thanks Scifi, I was actually a little suspicious of that thread, so thanks for providing the proof. Thread has been closed and the member deleted.

I checked some of the other forums from those Google search engine results. The member who made the post had a link in his / her profile. They were making the posts in order to get the back link from their member profile.

The recent changes made here on BAF prevent new spam members from getting a profile page back link and from getting a signature link (until they have made at least two posts). Hence the spammer gets no benefit from coming here. Hopefully they will realize this eventually and stop wasting their time and ours and stop coming here. Although, that may be wishful thinking on my part.

Nazreen I do have some anti-spam mods installed but I don't think I have that particular one. Our main problem has been spam registrations. We do have some spam posts but not too many and they do get removed quite quickly. I'll look into that Mod when we upgrade to the new version of VB, thanks for the suggestion.

[Nazreen]

I think I made a typo error in my post, Fergal. That should be 5 seconds (not 5 minutes). If submission of the post occurs in about 5 seconds after the posting area was generated, there's a high probability that the one posting is a bot because no human can write down a post in 5 seconds.

I guess that another spam would be this thread - winterrrrr vs summer (http://www.businessadviceforum.com/showthread.php?t=1668). As you can see, there were a lot of threads (1,360 threads to be exact) which were created in just a couple of days. See google results (http://www.google.com.sg/search?q=winterrrrr+vs+summer&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&client=firefox-a).

[silent_thunder]

I think VB has option for captcha in threads too?? Cant you use it. Spam is getting out of control, Digital point crashed last week following a severe case of spam, Thats why I increased SPam protection for my forum.

Bots are huge problem along with DDOS attacks

[Fergal]

Thanks Nazreen thread and member deleted. I will look at improving spam protection, once we upgrade the VB software, which will be in a few weeks.

[Swastik]

You could install the No Spam verification modification from vBulletin.org

Works great, from my experience. There are quite some supported modifications for this version of vBulletin.

[Fergal]

Swastik, is that the one that allows you to set a question that appears as part of the registration process?

[Nazreen]

That's a nice suggestion Swastik. If I'm not mistaken it should be this mod - Anti-Spam Verification Questions for SMF 1.1.7 (http://custom.simplemachines.org/mods/index.php?mod=1516), right? Aside from the bots, I think that this would also help in stopping non-english speaking forum posters from registering in BAF.

[Fergal]

Nazreen, we use VB, hence that SMF Mod could not help us and Swastik mentioned a mod at vbulletin.org.

[Swastik]

Yes, it actually is the one you mentioned Fergal.

Here is a direct link : http://www.vbulletin.org/forum/showthread.php?t=183329&highlight=NoSpam

[Fergal]

Thanks for the link Swastik, I'll look into that.

[silent_thunder]

You install that MOD swastik pointed out fergal. Bots will spoil a forum. Even I installed a similar mod in which you can have custom question and answer

Like what is the captial of england or something,

But I advise you to use a much simpler question, I used 2+5= , I hope everyone knows the answer

[Fergal]

Thanks Silent, I will be activating that bot in the near future. Thankfully we don't have a significant problem with bots posting at this time.