Page 1 of 2

Had to lock down registration...

PostPosted: Fri Dec 19, 2014 1:12 pm
by (TKC)-o]T3[o
Our spam bot counter measures have been defeated and I'm sick of deleting users and posts. I have locked down registration so that only admins can enable new accounts. It will stay locked down until I can find new spam bot protection.

Re: Had to lock down registration...

PostPosted: Sat Dec 20, 2014 4:43 am
by DFire
are we just using capcha? confirmation email should be enough though...

Re: Had to lock down registration...

PostPosted: Sat Dec 20, 2014 8:11 am
by (TKC)-o]T3[o
No we aren't. We use Q&A.

Re: Had to lock down registration...

PostPosted: Sat Dec 20, 2014 10:05 am
by (TKC)-o]T3[o
I'm trying a new Q&A of my own creation. We'll see if it's significantly complicated enough to stop the spam.. for now.

Re: Had to lock down registration...

PostPosted: Sun Dec 21, 2014 3:21 am
by DFire
Lemme know how it goes, I may be able to think up some more ideas...

Re: Had to lock down registration...

PostPosted: Sun Dec 21, 2014 4:31 am
by (TKC)-o]T3[o
I believe my new Q&A are working. I did have 3 new spam posts today but they were by bots that had registered previously. I then checked to see how many people had registered lately.. we had 100 bots, exactly, register on Dec 14th. I mass deleted them. I think we're good for now.

Re: Had to lock down registration...

PostPosted: Mon Dec 22, 2014 2:14 am
by DFire
100 bots in one day, talk about a web-code feast...

Re: Had to lock down registration...

PostPosted: Mon Dec 22, 2014 5:55 am
by CantFindBacon
Countermeasures... You make it sound like we are shooting flares and ECM off at incoming spam missiles! xD

Re: Had to lock down registration...

PostPosted: Tue Dec 23, 2014 12:00 pm
by (TKC)-o]T3[o
CantFindBacon wrote:Countermeasures... You make it sound like we are shooting flares and ECM off at incoming spam missiles! xD


Yeah.. unfortunately that's kind of how it is.

Re: Had to lock down registration...

PostPosted: Wed Dec 24, 2014 2:14 am
by brokenlynk
What do the spam bots post?

Re: Had to lock down registration...

PostPosted: Thu Dec 25, 2014 5:23 pm
by (TKC)-o]T3[o
I don't know.. it's in russian.

Re: Had to lock down registration...

PostPosted: Fri Dec 26, 2014 4:57 am
by DFire
I've dealt with spam bots before, usually the email confirmation will stop them because they use bogus email accounts when signing up. Sometimes bots will create topics, but usually just like to fill up your members lists ;)

Re: Had to lock down registration...

PostPosted: Fri Dec 26, 2014 5:32 am
by CantFindBacon
Well, you could just use captcha

Had to lock down registration...

PostPosted: Fri Dec 26, 2014 7:18 am
by CantFindBacon
Q&A.... What is my mom's name sounds right...lol jk

Re: Had to lock down registration...

PostPosted: Sat Dec 27, 2014 6:52 am
by (TKC)-o]T3[o
captcha has been broken for years.. and we've been using email confirmation from the very start. That stuff doesn't work and hasn't for several years now (not for us anyway). The Q&A usually works for a while, then it gets broken and you have to increase the complexity and change the question format. We used to be able to say..

"This website is for clan TK_. Hint* Fill in the missing letter for the clan name."

And that worked for a while. Then we had to do something else, then change again and more recently we had..

"_+4=7"

That is now broken.

So now I changed it to something that might be too tough, but if you have half a brain you should be able to figure it out..

"i went to the BeAch and a Crab pinched my toe" (unscramble the uppercase letters. hint - taxi)

The answer of course.. "CAB".

That has stopped the bots.. but I noticed we haven't had anyone else register either. haha