Spambot countermeasures and registration hanging bug

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04-23-24 02:46 PM

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Main - Help/Suggestions/Bug Reports - Spambot countermeasures and registration hanging bug

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Plokzig

Posted on 03-18-21 01:49 PM (rev. 3 of 06-30-21 08:36 AM)

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So it seems like the board is overrun with spam despite the use of a CAPTCHA: why not go for a Q&A system pertaining to the board's topic? It should keep bots out, persistent human spammers tend to get through if they try hard enough, but most spam farms won't even bother.

It also took me 5 minutes or so to actually be registered. A thread going back to 2012 suggests this is a broken proxy detection script.

blackhole89

Posted on 03-24-21 06:33 PM

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We actually originally had a custom captcha (and the code is still there), but some spammers did come through and lots of people complained that if only we used reCAPTCHA instead there would be no problem. In hindsight, I do think that reCAPTCHA made the situation a little worse on the balance.

I do like your idea of having some questions asking for very basic domain-specific knowledge ("what does the second S in SNES stand for?"). If I find myself with an hour to spare at some point, I might just go and implement that.

The current maintenance burden for me is essentially "check in every month or so and hard-delete spammers". For historical reasons, mods and "normal" site admins can only perform easily reversible actions (banning, locking, hiding, moving).

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Plokzig

Posted on 03-28-21 11:39 PM (rev. 5 of 06-30-21 08:37 AM)

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I like how you let the last registered user here keep its URL despite it being a sleeper

blackhole89

Posted on 03-29-21 04:54 AM

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Not sure something as grandiose as "sleeper account" is appropriate for the particular one you linked; more likely that they're perfectly happy just having deployed the link in their profile for whatever zany SEO scheme...

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Plokzig

Posted on 03-29-21 04:52 PM (rev. 4 of 06-30-21 08:53 AM)

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And then you just ignored it and let it continue its sketchy schemes. slaps you

Plokzig

Posted on 05-16-21 03:12 PM (rev. 2 of 06-29-21 09:35 AM)

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Niidle

Posted on 10-29-21 09:52 PM

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Christ this place is filling up with s p a m m e r s and people sockpuppeting just to sell their shit.

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