Spam bots are getting on my tits.
Captcha for new user registration?
Spam bots are getting on my tits.
The light that once I thought compassion still casting shadows in your action
The words you shared were cold transactions that bring me to curse what you've done
When you're up there absorbed in greatness with such success you've grown complacent
I hope you scorch your many faces when you fly too close to the sun
I've switched human verification schemes. We'll see what that does. The scheme we had had worked incredibly well before, I'm not sure what happened that suddenly let so many bots get through - previously most of the spammers that got through had a human behind them.
They've adapted.
One of us is a spam bot. They take human form.
Hope is the denial of reality
Loki, this sentence is false.
I think the results of my human verification change are in: This is worse.
Anyone have any suggestions of easy, culturally neutral questions I can ask at registration? (DO NOT state the answers) I suspect the old batch is failing because they've been solved somehow.
What, exactly, were you doing before and now?
The light that once I thought compassion still casting shadows in your action
The words you shared were cold transactions that bring me to curse what you've done
When you're up there absorbed in greatness with such success you've grown complacent
I hope you scorch your many faces when you fly too close to the sun
How many unique letters are in the following sentence?Originally Posted by Wraith
The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog
"In a field where an overlooked bug could cost millions, you want people who will speak their minds, even if they’re sometimes obnoxious about it."
Originally (and we're back on it now), registration required you answer one of three questions, chosen at random:
- What is the last name of the first President of the United States?
- What city is the Eiffel Tower located in?
- What is two plus two? Please spell out the answer. (edit: wording not exact, already deleted so can't reference)
After my first post in this thread, I switched to using reCaptcha, but a lot of bots started getting through that were being stopped by the above scheme. I think the last question was too weak, so I've already dropped that. Looking at it now, the second question can be answered automatically by putting it into a google/bing search too.I think the first one is still a solid blocker.The first one too.
I'd like to have a couple other questions that any human would easily be able to answer, but which can't be arrived at simply by bots.
Last edited by Wraith; 10-04-2012 at 06:18 PM.
Not sure if you were joking, but I think that'd take too much work to answer.How many unique letters are in the following sentence?
The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog
I dunno if this is too much work, but how about generating a dozen or so random words from a dictionary text file, then asking the user to type out a randomly determined word from the list?
The light that once I thought compassion still casting shadows in your action
The words you shared were cold transactions that bring me to curse what you've done
When you're up there absorbed in greatness with such success you've grown complacent
I hope you scorch your many faces when you fly too close to the sun
It does sound like work, but I'm not sure what you're getting at. Example?
I think I figured out how the bots started getting past the previous system. The questions I've been asking have been showing up, in their exact wording, on sites like wikiAnswers, and Yahoo answers. So the bots are getting humans to help them pass the human verification tests. It's actually kinda clever.
The only question I have now is 'What is the fourth word from the end of this sentence?' If my above theory is correct, it's likely that we'll need to cycle these questions occasionally, and I'd still like to have more than one available at a time.
Ok, so you get a dictionary text file and pick twelve words at random. Print them on the screen
"Lemonade, Dyspepsia, Brown" etc etc
Then, pick a random number between 1 and 12. Say, 6.
Question: What is the sixth word in the list?
I mean, is this built in vBulletin functionality you're using, or are you hacking the templates to do it?
The light that once I thought compassion still casting shadows in your action
The words you shared were cold transactions that bring me to curse what you've done
When you're up there absorbed in greatness with such success you've grown complacent
I hope you scorch your many faces when you fly too close to the sun
meh. Its a keyboarding test, answer is the sum of the alphabet, but I admit it may be to english focused.
I've seen similar questions that list a string of fake words with 1 real word, and it asks you to type in the real word.
Last edited by Ominous Gamer; 10-05-2012 at 12:42 AM.
"In a field where an overlooked bug could cost millions, you want people who will speak their minds, even if they’re sometimes obnoxious about it."
It'd get rid of people that can't spell too
I'm using vBulletin functionality to do the question/response thing, but would have to mess with the php for this. It's simple enough to do, just need to find the right place to do it. Most of the questions I come up with wind up being about this anyways, so I probably will wind up doing this.
I'm going to call it not culturally neutral enough, but that may be just to cover my embarassment at not having the answer click for me immediately.
Quick, dirty/non-accessible solution: make a question with the wrong answer, then change the text to the right question with javascript. Bam! Take that, Johnny Cylon.
The light that once I thought compassion still casting shadows in your action
The words you shared were cold transactions that bring me to curse what you've done
When you're up there absorbed in greatness with such success you've grown complacent
I hope you scorch your many faces when you fly too close to the sun
Which one of these words is unlike the others: Orange, Red, Blue, Purple, Green.
I could make more easily with pictures, where it would simply be things like "Which letter is Red", or "Which shape is the same as the one in the box?" which would not have answers available on the internet, and would require a human thinking abstractly.
Or we could do something really stupid:
Who is the first President of the United States? A) Cheese Wheel Jackson B) A&W Root Beer C) George Washington D) Choose this answer if you're not a bot, don't choose George Washington
Who fought for Civil Rights in the United States? A) Malcolm X B) Rosa Parks C) Martin Luther King Jr D) Choose this answer if you're not a bot.
. . .
How big are your tits and how many bots can mount them at once?
Brevior saltare cum deformibus viris est vita
Multiple choice answers are subject to the bots simply guessing, assume they're not set up on the basis that all question and answer fields they'll encounter are going to be text input, and if they are the very fact of having a drop down where they expect a text field will foil them.
Your other ones would work, but they would be completely unaccessible. Do we care about accessibility round here? We're not exactly swarming with (legitimate) new registrants, so I can't imagine we get many with a visual impairment.
The light that once I thought compassion still casting shadows in your action
The words you shared were cold transactions that bring me to curse what you've done
When you're up there absorbed in greatness with such success you've grown complacent
I hope you scorch your many faces when you fly too close to the sun
Does a bot know what a multiple choice question is if its not presented as one? I'm not talking about them clicking radio buttons, but typing in the letter of the correct answers. Which is the wrong answer. I'm also completely okay with real people being filtered out because they answered "C) George Washington" to a question that was telling them to not answer George Washington.
. . .
That answer is yes, if the people who wrote it programmed it to. Which they probably didn't.
The light that once I thought compassion still casting shadows in your action
The words you shared were cold transactions that bring me to curse what you've done
When you're up there absorbed in greatness with such success you've grown complacent
I hope you scorch your many faces when you fly too close to the sun
What is the last name of the inventor of the Tesla coil?
Sort of a trick question, presumably a bot couldn't figure that one out...?
Not being funny but how about we turn off automatic registration and if someone wants to register they need to PM someone to get it manually approved? How often do we ge new members who weren't invited?
I don't think we've gotten a single new member...
Hope is the denial of reality
I want you to log out and try PM'ing yourself to see how well this works.
. . .
I'm sure Google could be persuaded to host iwannaregisterattwf@gmail.com
In the future, the Berlin wall will be a mile high, and made of steel. You too will be made to crawl, to lick children's blood from jackboots. There will be no creativity, only productivity. Instead of love there will be fear and distrust, instead of surrender there will be submission. Contact will be replaced with isolation, and joy with shame. Hope will cease to exist as a concept. The Earth will be covered with steel and concrete. There will be an electronic policeman in every head. Your children will be born in chains, live only to serve, and die in anguish and ignorance.
The universe we observe has precisely the properties we should expect if there is, at bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil, no good, nothing but blind, pitiless indifference.
There are different ways to privately send a message as Nessus has pointed out.
I foresee this email address getting a lot of spam, and then being forgotten about.
. . .
Looks like Cassandra here just volunteered to run the registration office!
In the future, the Berlin wall will be a mile high, and made of steel. You too will be made to crawl, to lick children's blood from jackboots. There will be no creativity, only productivity. Instead of love there will be fear and distrust, instead of surrender there will be submission. Contact will be replaced with isolation, and joy with shame. Hope will cease to exist as a concept. The Earth will be covered with steel and concrete. There will be an electronic policeman in every head. Your children will be born in chains, live only to serve, and die in anguish and ignorance.
The universe we observe has precisely the properties we should expect if there is, at bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil, no good, nothing but blind, pitiless indifference.
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