Topic: What's with the new users?

[Ghandi]

First we had the buysauna guy and now we have heightgrowthshoes.com, which while admittedly funnier than saunas (short people are funny), it's still a dumb troll trying to plug his site.

What really bothers me, though, is why he is advertising here. I didn't realize that we had short people posting on here. Gross.   

[iPPi]

Not to mention the size of this community.

[scottws]

Clearly they are just bots that are scripted to be able to register on a few known forum types.  Obviously, SMF is one of them.  I'll take some preventative measures.

http://www.google.com/search?q=heightgrowthshoes.com&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&client=firefox-a
http://www.google.com/search?q=buysauna.net&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&client=firefox-a

[Ghandi]

Don't protect the short people, Scott. He's come for our vertically challenged, and I say good riddance. Short people are destroying our textile industries by using less fabric for their clothes than normal people. Damn terrorists.

[gpw11]

[Antares]

but then... why do they register and never post?

[scottws]

I think just the registration itself is a form of advertising, seeing the name in the memberlist.

[iPPi]

Does our registration process have a CAPTCHAS?  That should make it more difficult for bots to be able to register, if it doesn't stop them altogether.

[Antares]

Does our registration process have a CAPTCHAS?  That should make it more difficult for bots to be able to register, if it doesn't stop them altogether.

No, although I wouldn't be surprised if there is a plugin to install that could do that.  As it is its not like we're being assaulted by bots.

[scottws]

Does our registration process have a CAPTCHAS?  That should make it more difficult for bots to be able to register, if it doesn't stop them altogether.

Yes, currently this forum employs CAPTCHA (has since v1.1.2 I think).  You can test it yourself by logging out and clicking the Register link.

It's pretty simplistic at its current setting and I guess either the bots are able to "see" what is there or they have some sort of workaround.  I could make it harder - visually - but 1) I'm not sure the bots these days even have to visually "see" the characters to get past and 2) it's actually pretty difficult to identify the all the letters as a real human.

The mod I recently added should do a pretty good job at stopping the bots from now on, at least according to its creator.  If it doesn't, I'll bump up the CAPTCHA level.

[Cobra951]

Last time I registered at a site somewhere, I had to refresh the contorted characters like 3 times, before I was able to read them without ambiguity.  What we need is anti-bot bots.

[gpw11]

I saw something on digg a few weeks ago about a new method of captcha (actually, I don't know if it still would be considered a captcha) that was far better for users and keeping out bots.  Basically, it showed you a picture and asked you something like a 5 question multiple choice quiz on very blatant stuff in the picture.  Another option was a series of ten pictures and it told you to click on the cat, the dog, the raccoon, and the beaver. 

I think both of these would be far better.

[idolminds]

I will join web sites to click on the beaver.

[Cobra951]

Here you go, idol.  Your wish is my command.  Click on The Beaver:

[Antares]

wtf is up with that third picture?

[Ghandi]

Let's all welcome our newest user!

[scottws]

Heh.  Well so much for that Are You Human? mod.

[Ghandi]

We knew it would happen. The bastards have evolved.