[Max Taxable]

Originally Posted by CAG CheechDogg

@ Max Taxable

I could care less if Captcha and Q&A annoys "humans", if they really want to join my forums they have to go through the process.

Even with Captcha on, I am still getting people to register, just this month alone I have 88 new registered members and none of them are spam accounts, last month I had 70+.

You choose not to have moderators and that is fine, everyone's sites and forums are different and serve different purposes.

I happen to know a spammer and from him telling me how they find sites to spam is pretty impressive. They have figured out a way to scan sites for any kind of script that slows down and tries to deny registration to bots and humans. They don't always do it just to spam, they do it to show people that no matter what they can still get through your registration process regardless of what anti-spam system you have.

So in other words, the more "you" try to stop them the more they are going to mess with you, especially if you have a pretty active site or forums.

I don't want to be getting emails with details about bots and besides I have blocked and every day I add new IPs and ranges to block most bots. Getting emails every day about bots is just not something everyone wants to deal with. If you do that is fine, it annoys me.

I was merely describing what I do, not recommending it. I have been a active botnet fighter for 11+ years. I am well aware of their techniques and research. I've also been instrumental in shutting down a couple, one admin of which is sitting in US federal prison.

The scripts I use aren't detectable and don't slow down the registration process at all.

Project Honey Pot data is used by quite a few anti-spam plugins, not the least of which is Spam -o- Matic, for blocking known sources of forum spam. I collect data on spammers and enter that data at PHP. It's just a hobby that might have the side benefit of helping others.

I hate spam.