New User Blocking

[Admin]

I have turned off the ability for new users to register in forums. Despite security measures, we are getting 30 bots a day registering. This is not permanent. I will leave the new user lock on for one week, to test how well it might break the cycle of bot registration.

[Contessalynn]

What the heck is this?!?!?!?!?! Is this legit? Sari can you verify please.

T

[Chibiwolf]

Admin is Sari ;x

[Sarizaddi]

I am in the process of trying to acquire some new bot protection software. In the meantime, bot registration has hit all time high of nearly 30 bots per day. These bots register, and immediately begin doing 3 things. First, they steal the member registry, which means every time a bot registers, they send spam email to the email address of every member of the forum. The second is that they try to spam PMs to everyone. Third, they try to circle around the authorization software to use the forum as a spam host to send out junk emails to hundreds of people per bot.

Every time I have tried to block them, they have passed through. Even moderating every new user myself, I can't get them to stop, and I can't keep up.

If the bots reach a blocked forum, I'm hoping it will be enough to break the circle a bit, and hopefully stop or drop our name out of their loop.

In the meantime, I'm looking for software I can add up to block them. I have found a couple ideas, but I'm looking for a solution that won't cost me hundreds of dollars a year.

[Yajirobe]

I had a bot problem within a week of creating the dynamiscalendar.com forums. I solved it quickly by adding one small human input verification step to the registration process. It's not one of those "enter the letters" thing as they don't actually work very well against bots who know how those programs work. I just ask the user a question every FFXI player should know and have a list of acceptable responses. The code for this is actually very simple and I can pm it to you if you want to try to adapt it to vBulletin.

[Imoq]

Yaji h4x!

[Sarizaddi]

Excellent!

[Nusakan]

I am in the process of trying to acquire some new bot protection software. In the meantime, bot registration has hit all time high of nearly 30 bots per day. These bots register, and immediately begin doing 3 things. First, they steal the member registry, which means every time a bot registers, they send spam email to the email address of every member of the forum. The second is that they try to spam PMs to everyone. Third, they try to circle around the authorization software to use the forum as a spam host to send out junk emails to hundreds of people per bot.


Wonder if that explains why my POL account's e-mail got spammed up the yang... and still is getting spammed. I removed it from neph a long time ago in hopes that it doesn't come back. Not a big deal or anything since it's "capped" at 200 or something.

[Contessalynn]

That is really neat Yaji. Definitely a creative solution. ^^

T