As all of you probably have noticed, over the past week - at least - there have been numerous accounts that were created with false identification, posted once either gibberish or an add, and then disappeared.

Whats up with this? Is there any way to stop it or something?
These are becoming a problem.
And yes, I know one pheasable option is "live with it."

They disappear because the mods do their job.

I don't mind them - some of the time they are quite witty/stupid and it puts a smile on my face - and they are really harmless, only a dimwit could be fooled!

What Row is saying is that it's spam created by bots... nothing to worry about

this is normal for a forum to undergo a bot attack.

About a year ago I essentially stopped the bots by requiring administrator validation for all accounts.

As of about 3-4 months ago we've removed admin validation - we get bots. Thankfully our Mods do a rather nice job at deleting their posts quickly. Looking back I think requiring admin validation was not my greatest decision as it created a rather annoying "Waiting period" for anyone who wanted to register while they waited for a staff member to look at the validation que.

Currently we have the same security measures 99% of sites employee to combat false accounts/spam accounts. There were a few ideas going around the staff forums too see if cecchi could write up some additional security - but so far I haven't seen enough bot activity to warrant another step in the registration process.

It doesn't seem too bad (one forum I saw had a 500 post pron topic, and some bots had 1k+ posts)

I just report what I see, but i'm not too worried.

holy moses that is epic. link to forum please.

ps. naughty spiah for looking at a 500 post pr0n topic

I heard EBAS got one of them of gay towel. That was the day with the most forum views apparently.

I know that you probably don't see them as much as I do, but they've been around a LOT for at least like 3 years now, they're nothing new. But it's already been said, we can deal with them just fine. Just sometimes it takes a bit longer, but be patient, we ban every single one of them and the posts always get deleted.

By the way, don't be too sure they're bots. Personally, I think it's chinese people posting this stuff, or at least in that direction. They get paid to spam all kinds of sites, bots just can't always do the job properly.

Ok, thanks. I was just checking .

It's long since been taken down.

It was some old gfx forum, I went in the topic on accident.
It was crazy.

Dam..

Hehe bots are a pain but with the right measures they can be prevented.
I used to own a programming forum and I saw some very interesting ads until I got creative with the registration.

Dont worry about it

Yeah Spire...accident.

Doesn't RuneCrypt have captchas? if not, why not implement ReCaptcha?

Everywhere has captchas. But captchas are about as useful as an umbrella in a hurricane.

The only way to stop a bot really is to create some form of semi random mathematical problem or question which they can't work out.

But such things are a bitch to code.

Not really rob:



Stick that in the registration page with a few style edits and you're away
Dont trust me? Get Cmafai to go over it

Heh. That would be far simpler than the way I had planned. I'd have just created a load of unique questions and preloaded them on the server with an associated solution.

for one of the answers, just to piss people off make it 1+1 = 3

because when a mommy and a daddy......

L O L. That would be naughty.

I do not feel that our current rate of 2-3 bots a night warrants adding an extra step to registration.

I agree Matty. Plus they aren't that harmful - most are just funny.

We had an anti-spam measure on the "Help Me" forum that worked 100% to stop bots, that I could also put in place in the other forums (if it is a members first time posting). Looked like this:



I suppose the email field would be pointless outside of the Help Me forum...

And Beyblade, your solution looks nice but please please please.... WHY $_SESSION variables? I have yet to ever use them in any code of mine, and I fail to see the necessity. Also, this is just me being a picky bastard, but condense your code Entire lines should not be wasted with one bracket, etc </rant>

Maybe put it up for those with less than 100 posts? In that way the bots get caught out and actual members don't.

As i've already stated - I do not feel the problem is close to large enough to warrant an extra step in the registration process. Adding a security challenge to post at select forums would be extremely annoying to a new member imo.

Yeah, don't you guys listen to Matt

Naw. He's just here to pay the bills and look pretty.

this is quite a popular topic
anyway i do not think bots are a problem as i think someone said i find the quite funny

I like the bot activity. It provides a good anger outlet.