4 replies to this topic

[glen]

Hi everyone,

I just spent a bit of time trying to track down a solution to the large number of spammer that appear to be attacking Invision Power Board Forums.

There was 2 useful suggestions that I have implemented:

Reduce email validation period
One is to reduce the time period during which a member may validate their email address to become a forum member. This will make it harder for many of the spammers who tend to take a few days to get around to verifying email addresses.

Improving GD Anti Spam Image
Secondly, I have made the anti spam image that appears on sign up more complicated and hopefully harder to read for spam bots. Here are some examples of the "before and after" anti spam GD images. I will let you know if the number of spammers I get in my forums reduces or not.


Before modification


After applying a modification described at Invisionize

If you like the improved anti spam GD image then you can learn how it is achieved by following the instructions on the Invisionize Site:

http://wikize.invisionize.com/wiki/Improvi...Anti_Spam_Image

I used 4 different fonts. Arial, Comic Sans, Verdana and Garamond

[Craw]

I have better way to get rid of spambots. I created a custom profile field that only the admins can see, and this field is required.

A sample question for the profile field: What is 5 + 3?
And in the ACP just put the answer as 8.

100% spambot elimination.

[glen]

hi craw, thanks for the tip. though i must say the improve captcha is still working very well. i still get some manual spammer sign ups but not spambots as far as i can see.

[Craw]

That's good to know. But in my board ever since I put in that custom profile field there have been a total stoppage of these spammers

[glen]

do you get many manual sign up spammers? i have had a problem with them on this website in particular as everyone is chasing a bloody link!