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New Captcha Application - Deletion of non-activated accounts

Posted: January 20th, 2011, 11:54 pm
by MegaMav
BowlingChat,

Due to the recent influx of spammer accounts, and the crumbling of reCAPTCHA in verifying legitimate human users, I've implemented a new *intelligent* CAPTCHA program called peoplesign.

Its an image matching challenge program that forces you to select 2 similar images as a right of passage.

Since we have so many odd accounts over the past few weeks, I have removed a very large number, close to 200, inactive spam accounts.

If your account had a very weird name, like, "DrmMoviesForFree" or "aexteseeaidews36" or you're from the outer corners of well know spammer origins like Russia, Poland, Brazil, China, and have an odd email account name with a bunch of periods or plusses, or you're showing from chicago, but use a UK email address, your account probably got whacked before it was activated.

If you recently signed up, but havent activated, and the activation doesnt work, please resign up. Hopefully these spammer problems are behind us for the time being, as you know, spammers never stop inventing ways to circumvent intelligence gates.

Sorry for the inconvenience if I didnt save your account, please reregister.

-Eric

Re: New Captcha Application - Deletion of non-activated acco

Posted: January 21st, 2011, 5:51 pm
by JohnP
Thank you for your time and effort to make this the best moderated bowling site on the internet. You are appreciated! -- JohnP

Re: New Captcha Application - Deletion of non-activated acco

Posted: January 21st, 2011, 9:36 pm
by RevZiLLa
In Vbulletin there is an add-on that checks IP's of everybody, new or old, against the blacklists of known spammers. This has been the most effective measure we have against spammers. They can only get in with their real IP address and then they are easily IP banned for good.

A Google search might find that application for your board engine.

Re: New Captcha Application - Deletion of non-activated acco

Posted: January 21st, 2011, 9:41 pm
by kellytehuna
how well does that deal with rotating IP addresses? Most ISP are DHCP enabled and as such, pull the address for a user from a pool of IP addresses. Every time the router resets, they get a new IP. I think they tend to have a renewal policy of once a day or so. Something like that.

Re: New Captcha Application - Deletion of non-activated acco

Posted: January 21st, 2011, 9:54 pm
by MegaMav
Thanks for the recommendation Lou.

Unfortunately IP addresses are only temporary.
IP's are regularly recycled and renewed, there are even talks of expanding to more IP's.

With Ipv6 im not sure if IPv4 addresses are even compatible.
You can read more about IPv6 on google.

Due to IP's being recycled, I dont want to risk shutting out legitimate users by IP banning ranges or large scale individual IP's.

(In my opinion) The best way to keep (relatively dumb) spam bots out, is to outsmart them.

So far they've out foxed reCAPTCHA, but I have yet to see a spammer sign up, active or inactive account, by getting through the new peoplesign CAPTCHA.

Anyone interesed, If you havent seen it or tried it, logout and go to the registration page, its pretty neat how it works.
It takes logic and intuition to solve the 2 prong puzzle that is simple enough for any human to complete.

If it holds up to no spammers over the next week, I may clear out my ban list.

-Eric

Re: New Captcha Application - Deletion of non-activated acco

Posted: January 21st, 2011, 9:58 pm
by MegaMav
JohnP wrote:Thank you for your time and effort to make this the best moderated bowling site on the internet. You are appreciated! -- JohnP
John, thanks for the kind words, I try to do whats best for bowling and the community.
Sometimes I need to decide between the 2, the community usually wins. :)

The reward of bowlers improving their game and doing things they've never done before in the sport makes it worth the effort.

-Eric