Automated Spam Bots with the Birth Date 3/28/1983

[Boss-Hog]

Hello,

Over the past several months, my forum has been overrun by automated spam bots that, once registered, start threads filled with lewd links or advertisements. It's obvious that it's automated based on the fact that the birth date is always the same (March 28, 1983) and have read two others posts from vBulletin users who have had this same problem, but no solution was provided. I've decided to temporarily require moderation approval on all new registrations, because if I don't delete the accounts before they're confirmed, the forum will have several new posts from these accounts. However, that's not what I'd like to have to do in the long run for all new legitimate registrations.


I'd estimate that we're currently getting about two signups a day with that birth date. I posted this on vbulletin.com and was informed that vB doesn't give the user the ability to ban by birth date, and that I'd have to take the problem over here. I'm not asking for custom code to provide this functionality; rather, I'm asking if anyone else has had this problem and how you alleviated it? My site currently requires image verification during signup, but I read that's no longer a road block to spam robots, as they can now interpret these. Any help on this issue would be greatly appreciated. Thanks.