Spam Registrations

[gregory_clayton]

Hi All,

My forum is going well at the moment, but I am having a lot of Spam Registrations such as:

uk_pay_loan, payday_uk, advanced_free_loan

Usernames such as this. I have the random number thin to prevent spam bots where they type in a number, and I also have a question box where they have to answer a question before they register.

Anyone got any ideas? Is there a way I could ban certain words from their username?

my boards are here if needed: www.wwehq.com/forum

Cheers
Greg

[Ath3na]

Try something like Spamomatic

We installed it, it is really good.
https://vborg.vbsupport.ru/showthread.php?t=248042&highlight=spamomatic

[Max Taxable]

I also have a question box where they have to answer a question before they register. I have found two things that stop bot registrations in their tracks.

1.) Make your answers identical to the questions, making the questions actually instructions to copy/paste the question into the answer box. Make them long-worded. Example: "The answer is the same as the question. Can you copy/paste? Good! Humans can, bots cannot. Bots also cannot follow instructions, or even read! So please copy this entire paragraph and paste it into the box below. HUMANS ONLY!!!"I have four of these, worded slightly differently, that rotate randomly.

2.) The "IsBot" mod. (https://vborg.vbsupport.ru/showthread.php?t=135094) This mod rejects any and all registration attempts where the registration process moves between do=register and do=addmember faster than a time you set. Bots fill out the form very quickly, humans cannot possibly do it that fast. I have mine set for 10 seconds and it works great.

This system rejects 30-40 bot registrations on my board daily. Only humans can get through, a bot has never made it.

Unfortunately, there really isn't a whole lot you can do about the human spammer other than have new users all moderated, and/or limit what they can do once registered, using any of several mods that limit activities based on post count or time registered..

Plus you can smile, knowing somebody's actually paying this doof to go around spamming message boards.

[gregory_clayton]

Thanks for the responses guys, having looked into the issue further, I found out they were all done on one IP. So I banned the IP and will implement these features mentioned above.

Cheers
Greg

[fatherofspeed]

we had the same spam hit our site over the past few days. finally seems to have stopped since changing to a q/a that requires thought and effort.

[Ath3na]

A lot of our spam was being sorted by spamomatic but once we changed to Q&A the number reaching the forum dropped dramatically so less for spamomatic to do :)