Exactly. That's the kid of invisible auditing I want to have.
Adding a routine to the posting system to do that wouldn't be too difficult I don't think.
It wouldn't at all. The hard part would be the listing of suspended users in the acp for review.
Instead of a list, you could send an "unsuspend" email to a random admin/volunteer.
KermMartian wrote:
Exactly. That's the kid of invisible auditing I want to have.


But its better to PREVENT them from registering than to try and detect them AFTER they have registered. Remember the old saying "an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure"? Just add elf's sweet anti-bot measure and get it over with!
yeah, I have had enough of these bots, half my moderation duties shouldn't be bot deletion.
wow i did not know it took so much time, given that i think having the phpbb image the instead of approving you it then goes to another page with elfprince's mod would be the best way
Honestly, you probably wouldn't have to change much.

I can bet changing the registration so that you have to click on a button to see the current captcha instead of showing it wide open would foil 90% of the spambot's out there. Heck, probably changing the default registration link from profile.php?mode=register&agreed=true to something else would probably foil 90% of spambots.

Bots are easy to screw up, since most of the bots are going to be registering on the basis of the same cookie cutter default phpbb registration layout and will just attempt to register using one of it's predefined registration templates once its spider (or someone spyware infected PC) id's phpbb as your board. It will most likely fail on anything not equal to the default phpbb standard, and the spambots wont bother to change their code for one site when they can go spam millions of other sites (and make money spamming said easier to bot sites) without having to touch the current code they have.

This however is a harder problem to beat.
100% agreed there, I wouldn't try and build a bot for only one site (unless of course, it was a VERY visited site with an easy to get around system.
One problem you'll have with identification is languages...

Dog != Hund

if you catch my drift.
Why not have another question: "What color is this box?" and a PHP-generated solid-color box of the usual colors as another anti-bot method?
Again, language nuances... Rot != red...

Another issue would be capitalization... and the bots would be capable of getting around it... If you wanted to use colors, use something like...

|red stripe | blue stripe | purple stripe|
| | | |
| | | X |

which color stripe has the X in it? (The X would move or the colors would change)

That way there isnt one solid color for the bots to pick up on... Unfortunately, this method is also hard on colorblind people...
In that case, but the name of the color at the top of the stripe (on white). That way 1) the name is known (no teal/light-blue mix-ups) and the bots have to actually look at where the X is then read the name of the color.
True. Another thing would be to use a random number in each stripe, and say "Which number is in the BLUE stripe"
KermMartian wrote:
I've noticed a sharp uptick in the number of news users
Shouldnt news be new.
lafferjm wrote:
KermMartian wrote:
I've noticed a sharp uptick in the number of news users
Shouldnt news be new.


hahaha, double pwn on Kerm,

yes it should be spelled new, and no, the bot problem isn't particularly new either....
careful, cuz the bots keep being improved to get around mods, I'm sure the bot creators will end up seeing mods like at cemetech, SFGP, Revsoft and MC and make their bots so it get past them
xlibman wrote:
careful, cuz the bots keep being improved to get around mods, I'm sure the bot creators will end up seeing mods like at cemetech, SFGP, Revsoft and MC and make their bots so it get past them


I'm sure they *won't*, because frankly, they won't care. It will cost them time (and time == money) to get around such mods, and given a small distrabution set (and lets face it, cemetech, revsoft, sfgp, et al. are tiny compared to other forums) - much more so than any of the advertising they can make, or if they are doing it to cause damage (viruses, trojans, etc...), then it doesn't make sense to alter a bot for such a limited user set when there are much larger communities to target
If they want to cause computer havoc they really should consider trying to post them somewhere *besides* a geek forum Razz
true, we are way too smart to fall for their stuff.

Hey, I decided that if I see a bot post, I am going to have some fun editing them up a little until an admin can come in and take care of them (basically, something really stupid). If you want a bot post to do something, let me know, and I might do it (though I hope I don't have to do too many more of those).
  
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