How do you deal with spambots?

[Kyng]

During the days of ZetaBoards, they were immediately deleted and their IP addresses blocked.

Now with Jcink, I see them trying to register but cannot, because apparently Jcink has very robust anti-spambot technology.

Regarding your forum though, you will need to think about putting up stronger protection against them, because not allowing people to view the forum won't work out as a long-term solution (I checked your forum just there to see that).

mostly I'm hoping they stop trying to swarm the forum but you do make a valid point.  just trying to clear out the bots took several days recently so I wanted to ensure we don't get too much too quickly.  still I can re-enable guest access to view the forums.  the biggest change though is as king stated, manually approving users.  but also setting them into a group called "newly registered"  which limits what they can do with their posts moderated to limit what spambots can do until they're ok'd as human.

You could always try adding some kind of dummy profile field .

Like Bryn said, our "Original Join Date" field is surprisingly good for catching spambots: they like to fill it in with nonsense dates .

Not sure that that would work for Make Station, but perhaps you can think of something !

[SpookyZalost]

During the days of ZetaBoards, they were immediately deleted and their IP addresses blocked.

Now with Jcink, I see them trying to register but cannot, because apparently Jcink has very robust anti-spambot technology.

Regarding your forum though, you will need to think about putting up stronger protection against them, because not allowing people to view the forum won't work out as a long-term solution (I checked your forum just there to see that).

mostly I'm hoping they stop trying to swarm the forum but you do make a valid point.  just trying to clear out the bots took several days recently so I wanted to ensure we don't get too much too quickly.  still I can re-enable guest access to view the forums.  the biggest change though is as king stated, manually approving users.  but also setting them into a group called "newly registered"  which limits what they can do with their posts moderated to limit what spambots can do until they're ok'd as human.

You could always try adding some kind of dummy profile field .

Like Bryn said, our "Original Join Date" field is surprisingly good for catching spambots: they like to fill it in with nonsense dates .

Not sure that that would work for Make Station, but perhaps you can think of something !

might be a way to do it.  I'd have to tinker with some stuff.  the good news is now that they're not getting through the number of spambots signing up seems to have diminished.

[SpookyZalost]

okay I had to share this post because it's hilarious!  I'm not sure if they're serious or not but if they aren't it's a pretty funny parody post.  Fortunately it never got through the defenses and was caught by the last line of defense.  human oversight.  might leave it up with the black'd out parts replaced with "redacted"  for extra laughs.

[Jarkko]

I have registrations on manual approval, due to the large volume of spambots that we get on here... sadly, MyBB doesn't have the best anti-spam protection in the world .

It's usually fairly obvious who's a spambot and who's a legitimate member, but when I'm not sure, I always let them in. When push comes to shove, I'd rather let in 100 spambots than deny one legitimate member!

Besides, we can always EXTERMINATE them later if they turn out to be a spambot. I take a certain perverse pleasure in doing so!

[Kyng]

I have registrations on manual approval, due to the large volume of spambots that we get on here... sadly, MyBB doesn't have the best anti-spam protection in the world .

It's usually fairly obvious who's a spambot and who's a legitimate member, but when I'm not sure, I always let them in. When push comes to shove, I'd rather let in 100 spambots than deny one legitimate member!

Besides, we can always EXTERMINATE them later if they turn out to be a spambot. I take a certain perverse pleasure in doing so!

Indeed .

Also, back in the ZB days, I sometimes had a bit of fun with my ban reasons for spammers. I think my favourite was someone who posted spam ads for shoes in German: for the ban reason, I simply stated "Michael Schuspammer" .

[SpookyZalost]

I have registrations on manual approval, due to the large volume of spambots that we get on here... sadly, MyBB doesn't have the best anti-spam protection in the world .

It's usually fairly obvious who's a spambot and who's a legitimate member, but when I'm not sure, I always let them in. When push comes to shove, I'd rather let in 100 spambots than deny one legitimate member!

Besides, we can always EXTERMINATE them later if they turn out to be a spambot. I take a certain perverse pleasure in doing so!

you mean with one of these?

[SpookyZalost]

So it's looking like my additional protections seem to be filtering out the bots that get through everything else now.  first post has to be vetted by a member of staff.  once that post is vetted only then can you post without everything being moderated.  but it does mean registrations are automatic again.  helps a bunch on filtering out the bots that get past everything else leaving just human spammers that manage to evade that last defensive measure.  because what bot is going to post normal posts then wait for replies to get past the human vetting before spamming?  at least I haven't seen any that complicated yet.

[~ True Legend ~]

This thread reminds me of that thread about AI being unable to read the time correctly from an analogue clock.