Topic: New Captcha to help eliminate spam and bots from registering

[capeweather]

Added a better captcha for new user registration. Below are pics of the old and new. From what I've read this is really helping out on other forums so we shall see.

http://www.phpbb.com/phpBB/viewtopic.php?t=473222

Old


New

[capeweather]

Ok..well...that didn't work. A spammer just signed up. I guess it's back to the drawing board and off to delete the little booger.  

[saratogaWX]

Dang.. I've been deleting 1 or 2 a day now (registrations, that is).. the Bots are active, but not so smart.

We've had only a couple of drive-by spams though.. most of the registrations just lurk there until deleted.

Like you say Chris, we can always enable 'no posting until validated', which really prevents the drive-by spam (just not the spambot registration).

Ken

[cnm]

Admin:

Go into Admin CP,
Go to Management > Custom Profile Fields > Add New Field
Field Title Protection against spambots
Description Enter 987654321 in the field below.
Field Type Text Input
Maximum Input 9
Display Order 0
Expected Input Format 987654321
Include on registration page? Y
Field MUST be completed and not left empty? Y
Field can be edited by the member? N
Make this a private profile field? Y
Make Admin and Super Moderator Editable/Viewable Only? Y

The bots won't know how to complete the field properly and the registration won't go through.  The new field appears in all new profiles, but only admins and mods can see it.

This has worked 100% for us at http://forums.spywareinfo.com

[capeweather]

I tried to find the fields you were talking about and could not locate them. Does PHPBB support this?

[cnm]

Woops, sorry.  Those directions were for Invision.  

There might be a way to add a registration field in PHPBB - maybe http://www.phpbb.com/phpBB/index.php has answer?

The nice thing about this fix is that it doesn't have to be particularly secret, as long as the field you add is unique to your site in some way.  The bot programmers go for hundreds of forums at once and aren't interested in custom tailoring for just one.