We're having a problem at our site (Talk Budgies). We've received spam/porn posts for a long time. For the past few days now though, they've included pictures! Now, for some reason, all the threads are made in the Introductions forum. We moderate all threads that go in the Introductions forum so none of these posts ever make it to the public, but we still do have a couple staff members who are pretty young. And even if we didn't have some young staff members, these pictures could still be offensive.

These spammers must be human, in my opinion. We have image verification and e-mail verification enabled at registration. Unless there are bots that can now bypass this stuff. If they are human (or even if they're not), why are they only targeting the Introductions forum? What else could we possibly do about this? Does anyone know of any good vB mods that could help us out with this? My guess is they're not bots, so what could we do to stop real spammers?

Any help would be much appreciated.

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Talk Budgies - a site for budgie owners to talk about budgies
Talk Parrotlets - where parrotlet enthusiasts come to talk about parrotlets

This will solve 95% of your spam problems

NoSpam! - an alternative to CAPTCHA images - vBulletin.org Forum

Spambots are smart. They can get by image and email verification quite easily...Most of them can't get past that NoSpam! mod. At least, not yet.

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Indeed, No Spam is the best. By allowing every user to set there own question, it gives an advantage that bots cannot easy adapt to it, as each forum would (theoretically) have a different question.

For this reason I suggest you do something more complex than 1+1, loads of people do that. Eventually these things might learn the more comman questions and try entering them.

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Have you tried banning their ips and such?

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Virtual Pet Sites - Myspace Editors-web games

I agree with Ryan. NoSpam! is the best!

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I went to Vegas, and all I got was this Blister. - true story!

Agreed. As above, however, use a question that isn't as frequently used. The more unique the question, the better chances of them failing the authorization.

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Sean - WhiteCocoa Support Manager
Coupon Code 90OFF -> 90% Off First Month of Service!

Yes... "2 + 2 = ?:4" is so old now.

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I went to Vegas, and all I got was this Blister. - true story!

Works for us

Well...1 + 1 does

I'm not saying that it will always work, but it does now...People say that the "common questions" like 1 + 1 and 2 + 2 don't work, but they do right now.

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Ryan, precisely why I said try to go for something more different that the usual. Spam bots have a habit of adapting, the more used a question is, the more likely it will adapt, or be re-programmed to use it. Try using a spelling, or repeat some long word. But seriously, maths is just getting really old for the No-Spam mod.

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Old or not, it still works. That's all I'm saying...and that mod has been out for nearly a year now - I believe it has always come packaged with that 2 + 2 question also. We still use that question here at AF and rarely get a spammer....used to get ~3 per day, now we get 1 per week, maybe

I'm not saying that you shouldn't come up with some more creative questions...but not doing so doesn't mean you're going to get spammers (at this point in time or in the foreseeable future)

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