bot prevention

Bots automate 99% of the process when registering on forums. Everything except the 'captcha' and 'special question' can be automated. Bots generally will pause at the captcha and the user will manually fill it in, then the bot continues. Usually everything but the captcha is automated.

We also, in addition to the captcha, ask a 'special question' during registration, "What's worth more, copper or aluminum?". Not a difficult question, but this causes 99% of automated registration attempts to fail because the bots aren't prepared for this extra field to fill in. Can't really prevent bots any further than that other than requiring approval of new accounts by a moderator/admin.

There used to be alot more spam coming through until we added the additional special question, but either way running a public website it's inevitable that we'll have to delete and combat spam here and there.

Don't forget about the /!\ report post feature if you spot spam before myself, Andrew or a moderator zaps it.

Originally Posted by admin

Bots automate 99% of the process when registering on forums. Everything except the 'captcha' and 'special question' can be automated. Bots generally will pause at the captcha and the user will manually fill it in, then the bot continues. Usually everything but the captcha is automated.

We also, in addition to the captcha, ask a 'special question' during registration, "What's worth more, copper or aluminum?". Not a difficult question, but this causes 99% of automated registration attempts to fail because the bots aren't prepared for this extra field to fill in. Can't really prevent bots any further than that other than requiring approval of new accounts by a moderator/admin.

There used to be alot more spam coming through until we added the additional special question, but either way running a public website it's inevitable that we'll have to delete and combat spam here and there.

Don't forget about the /!\ report post feature if you spot spam before myself, Andrew or a moderator zaps it.

Actually, it is the special question that truly works. Captcha doesn't work no more, now a days, but questions work all the time.