[Scummvm-devel] "Intelligent" forum spam bots

[Thierry Crozat]

phpBB 2 (and thus the ScummVM forum) already has captcha images. I  
don't think the most recent version of phpBB (3.0.5) has much more to  
offer on that area than version 2. It does have more features on the  
moderation and reporting side, but that does not prevent bots from  
registering and does not make it much easier to decide if an  
intelligent bot is just that or a stupid user.

The next version might be better though ( see http://www.phpbb.com/ 
blog/2009/06/27/3-0-6-captcha-plugins-and-you/#more-1615 ). So once  
it is released it might be a good idea to update to that version and  
look for a captcha plug-in that suits us (or implement our own). The  
3.0.6rc1 was released last saturday, but I have no idea when the  
final version will be released.

I am not saying Filippos should not update to 3.0.5 if he finds the  
time to do it. It might improve the situation a bit and hopefully  
upgrade from 3.0.5 to 3.0.6 will be easy.

Thierry

Le 18 sept. 09 à 10:11, Filippos Karapetis a écrit :

>
> Well, most modern forum software has captcha images during  
> registration, which stops some of these bots somewhat. Other forums  
> have custom questions like "If you are a human, please type how  
> much 1+1 are" (to avoid captcha reading software).
>
> I believe that the newer versions of phpBB do have captcha images  
> during registration, so we should upgrade our forum version. I've  
> dealt with phpBB and vBulletin in the past, so I could do this at  
> some point, if noone else wants to undertake the task
>
> Regards
> Filippos
>
> > From: max at quendi.de
> > To: scummvm-devel at lists.sourceforge.net
> > Date: Fri, 18 Sep 2009 10:52:06 +0200
> > Subject: [Scummvm-devel] "Intelligent" forum spam bots
> >
> > Hi folks,
> >
> > recently we got more and more successful spammers "coming thru".
> > Worse, some seem to be semi-intelligent. To the degree that I  
> start to
> > be uncertain who is and who isn't a spammer. See e.g. this guy:
> >
> > <http://forums.scummvm.org/search.php?search_author=deanhanson>
> >
> > What he says makes *some* sense and is connected to the thread it is
> > posted in, although it is rather off-topic. Of course many humans  
> act
> > just like that, so....
> >
> > I wonder how we should deal with such people. PM them privately to
> > test if they are bots? And of course we'd want all moderators to be
> > aware of how to deal with this all...
> >
> > Also, I wonder if there are better forum protection measures we  
> could
> > implement. Of course, our forum is rather unmaintained as it is
> > (running on a software, phpBB 2, that hasn't been further developed
> > for quite some time now). Maybe we need to switch to yet another
> > discussion board software (and find an admin for that) ?
> >
> > Bye,
> > Max
> >
> >  
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