Spam in 2013

[david.gilbert]

Hello,

There's a large volume of new users being registered at the moment just for the purpose of posting spam to the forum. As a temporary measure, new users will not be activated until approved by an admin. This is, of course, a real pain for everyone.

[matinh]

Hi David!

I also realized the increased spam messages and am (more or less) regularly deleting spam posts. However, I don't think we will benefit much from the new account activation procedure. An admin cannot tell in advance if a new user is malicious or not. So he would have to grant permission to activate the new account anyway. It's just an additional step for the admins.

IMHO some kind of automated test (like captchas) should be added to prevent spam accounts. Don't know if this forum software supports it, though.

Just my 2¢,
- martin

[david.gilbert]

Captchas were enabled already, they seem not to work 100%. The activation is just a short term workaround while I figure out what to do next.

[david.gilbert]

I've changed the registration challenge from reCaptcha to a Question/Answer. That should work for at least a while, but I don't expect it to be effective for long.

[KevinWorkman]

For what it's worth, I almost didn't join because I couldn't figure out the exact formatting of the captcha (dollar sign, decimal point, trailing zeros instead of just the integer number). It might not be a big deal, but you might also be preventing potential users from joining. Up to you guys, just thought I'd let you know.

You could also check out Are You a Human, they seem pretty neat: http://areyouahuman.com/

[sjoerd]

I agree with KevinWorkman. It also took me quite some tries to get the answer right. I think it is helpful if the site is a bit more specific in how the answer should be structured, or a bit more tolerant in the acceptance of answers.

[maxo]

Yes, it took me several tries to get the answer right. It would be helpful if some hints for the formatting were provided in the question text.

[TheBronx]

Well, I've also had trouble with the antispam question. As I'm from Spain the cost was displayed in euros and not in dollars. Also the formating is not very intuitive
If you are not a bot, the answer is $65.00