vBulletin 3.8 - worst for spam.

[readjono]

Thanks for the tips. That sounds like a good idea.

Originally Posted by Digital Jedi

Also remember that humans can register bots and then send them o'spammin', or bots could have registered months ago and don't start spamming until after you've installed precautions.

Well they all seem to have registered in the last 48 hours from what I can see.

[Digital Jedi]

Probably bots registered by their owners. Or they got through the type of questions I mentioned above that are too easy for bots to be programmed to guess, if you happen to have any. (i.e. Are you a human?) Give the hardcore questions I mentioned a try and take a no tolerance policy towards spam if you don't already and delete, not ban, users who clearly appear to be bots.

[Dismounted]

The differences in registration/human verification in vBulletin 3.7 vs. 3.8 is almost nil. I doubt the influx of spammers has anything to do with the upgrade.

[kevcj]

Originally Posted by readjono

and it's disappointing there's no tools to combat it. I have yet to find a mod to prevent it either. Any tips?

VBulletin has more tools to prevent spam then any other forum on the market. Just enable ReCaptcha in the human verification options and that will prevent the spam bots from signing up.

Human spammers are just a fact of life. But VB has LOTS of tools to fight spam bots. My forum gets one or two spammers a month.

[Digital Jedi]

Originally Posted by kevcj

VBulletin has more tools to prevent spam then any other forum on the market. Just enable ReCaptcha in the human verification options and that will prevent the spam bots from signing up.

Human spammers are just a fact of life. But VB has LOTS of tools to fight spam bots. My forum gets one or two spammers a month.

ReCAPTCHA has pretty much been nullified by the most recent spam bot programs. Pretty much a question and answer type field is the most fool proof way to prevent bot registrations.

[popular]

i thought it was only me i've had mad spam now

[kevcj]

Originally Posted by Digital Jedi

ReCAPTCHA has pretty much been nullified by the most recent spam bot programs. Pretty much a question and answer type field is the most fool proof way to prevent bot registrations.

I politely disagree on the ReCapthca statement.

[Digital Jedi]

Originally Posted by kevcj

I politely disagree on the ReCapthca statement.

Back in October ReCAPTCHA was cracked by the Xrummer spammers.
http://it.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/10/02/1415205

Now, I know they've made some improvements, but it's still much harder for a bot to guess random questions like, What color is this image? rather then decode the text from images it's been programed to decode.

[kevcj]

Originally Posted by Digital Jedi

Back in October ReCAPTCHA was cracked by the Xrummer spammers.
http://it.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/10/02/1415205

Now, I know they've made some improvements, but it's still much harder for a bot to guess random questions like, What color is this image? rather then decode the text from images it's been programed to decode.

Once again, I disagree.

There is not a single mention of ReCAPTCHA in the article you linked to. Your reply is "ReCAPTCHA was cracked by the Xrummer spammers." and a linked article. And the article you linked to offers NO supporting evidence that ReCAPTCHA has been cracked.

I even searched the page (using firefox search feature) and there is not a single mention of ReCAPTCHA in the article you linked to.

Why would you link to an article claiming it mentioned ReCaptcha when in fact it does not? There is a difference between captcha and ReCaptcha.

If you have proof supporting that ReCaptcha (not captcha) has been cracked, please post a link. But make sure that the article does in fact mention ReCaptcha.

[Dismounted]

The images from reCAPTCHA are images that haven't been able to be deciphered by computers with OCR. It relies on users submissions. The first image has a known answer (the "control" word), while the second does not. A known answer is one that was a "second image" but X users had the same answer, and it is assumed correct, and "promoted".