[CarlitoBrigante]

Ah, I know trolls with vested interests like you, no problem. You will go a long road selling out your services with this attitude. Nobody implied that there is not a human behind the spam; I implied that there was not a human physically going through the captcha process. What does "called by viruses" mean?

While you like to talk, my experience comes from about 200 forums we worked with during the years, some of them being the biggest vBulletin forums around; websites with 500,000 visitors per month were plagued by spammers even though they used the most advanced captcha systems at the time. A simple usergroup technique like the one above solved their problems. We have no "theory" or "statistic": we saw this happening starting 1-2 years ago. Why or how or the commercial implications I do not care: that is not my job. I see facts, I act on them.

Thankfully, a usergroup technique like the one above is free, unlike your extended service: your captcha, by the way, must be one of the most frustrating systems I have seen in a long time (why on earth are some pieces placed below other pieces, thus being invisible to the user?).

Anybody interested in security and in anti-spam measures instead of just advertising their services would never spend time to criticize the methods I outlined: they are added layers of protection.

On a note, your russian IP is being blocked because it is on a well-known spambot list: amazing, isn't it? If I were a company specialized on anti-spambot measures, I'd at least make sure to have a clean dedicated IP. And no, we do not ban whole IP ranges. The tool we use to protect against spam is a well-known commercial hardened kernel/anti-spam package which loads data about single IPs from some of the best spambot list databases.

Originally Posted by KeyCAPTCHA

How long was it the norm?


The statistics proves that if one stops bots then the spam also disappears

There are not and never were bots without human spammers behind them, otherwise they are called by viruses but not bots.
And there are no "pure" spammers without bots. Their productivity is so low and, resp., prices so high that they are economically senseless

Stop bots, and this is technically possible, then jump to conclusions

BTW, your home site http://magneticat.com/ blocks humans from even reading it giving, for example, to me:


And I am on black IP of a large ISP, meaning that just on this one you blocking dozens thousand of legitimate users.
Or the whole countries?
Cheers!

--------------- Added [DATE]1302551561[/DATE] at [TIME]1302551561[/TIME] ---------------

One more note to the poster: I believe it is better to have strong anti-spam measures that do not punish the good users like Akismet, centralized databases of spammers' IPs, and usergroup promotion schemes like the one I have outlined. The great thing is that these methods are FREE for everybody. Commercial websites need different licenses with Akismet, but it is well worth it.

Captcha systems are just a first barrier, good when not too frustrating for the user; security must be multi-layered. And I will certainly not recommend vBulletin owners I work with captcha systems that are backed by companies that like using trolling as an advertising scheme.