Preventing false/bot registrations

[Nodaz]

recently on a 1.1.19 forum i got another post form a register meber indicating that the registration process was horrid

While I completely understand the need to stop bots from posting ads the registration process for this website is ridiculous.

#1 if you're going to specify the content of Passwords then you should indicate that someplace. Its not very smart to force everyone to use the same system you have just removed the protection that system might add! Perfect example is Apple. Apple won't let you use symbols in your password which places limits on how secure your password for Apple can be.

#2 if you want to prevent bots then maybe your CAPTCHA and questions should be random instead of the same thing every time? I had to attempt the registrations process at LEAST 10 times because its not exactly user friendly or verbose in its ridiculous password requirements. During those 10 attempts the "verification" items were exactly the same each time. I could have signed up 1000s of bots by now because the "verification" never changes.

A. im not sure what they mean about using the same system you have just removed the protection the system might add...

I have had several attacks wherin 100's of post were mad by BOTS that i had to manually remove.
I am curious what is the best anti spam method, below is the packages list, specifically #1 and #11 are the "anti spam" measures i have installed.

Beyond that , are there settings within 1.1.19 that i can change to be more effective?


1.    Stop Forum Spam    0.5    

2.    SMF 1.0.22 / 1.1.16 Update    1.0    

3.    SMF 1.1.18 Update    1.0    

4.    Google Analytics Code    1.4    

5.    SMF 1.0.20 / 1.1.12 Update    1.0    

6.    SMF 1.0.19 / 1.1.11 Update    1.0    

7.    SMF 1.0.21 / 1.1.13 Update    1.0    

8.    SMF 1.0.23 / 1.1.17 Update    1.0    

9.    SMF 1.1.15 Update    1.0    

10.    SMF 1.1.14 Update    1.0    

11.    Anti-Spam Verification Questions    1.02    

12.    SMF 1.1.19 / 2.0.6 Update

[Kindred]

get rid of the captcha... it's useless anyway.

Get a whole series of questions and let the system randomly pick 2 out of the 10...

I have no idea what your use meanswith his comment in #1.


Best bet: Upgrade to 2.0.6 (questions feature is built in) and add Stop Spammer and Bad behavior + HTTPBL.   I have not had a single successful spammer with those three methods (and no captcha at all)

[Nodaz]

thank you so much for the quick reply.

lets just start simply..what is the easiest way to upgrade to 2.0.6?
  should i remove any packages first?

also, dont see how to change the setting so it picks random questions from a list.

[Kindred]

http://wiki.simplemachines.org/smf/Upgrading

you don't actually need to uninstall the mods, since they will all be "uninstalled" when you replace the forum files with the new versions.

as for captcha and questions...
http://wiki.simplemachines.org/smf/Security_and_Moderation

[Nodaz]

thanks, going to do the upgrade when i have more time to go through the steps methodically.
In the meantime, can i change the current setting to random for the registration questions?

[Kindred]

hmmm...  since questions is a mod in 1.1.x, I think you're going to have to ask in the mod support thread. Sorry, I don't know the answer... I haven't actually used 1.1.x in years

[Nodaz]

odd, i just got two (gmail) email notifications that a reply had been posted to this topic, yet the last post was from nov 4 2013

[Kindred]

that's because the posts were unrelated to your original and thus were split off

[Nodaz]

still doesn't make sense to me, why would i get a notification at all then, let alone 4+ months later.

[margarett]

Because the notification was generated the moment someone posted in your topic. Those posts were then split to another topic but the notification was generated already.

There is no "auto-unnotification" in SMF, so you will get a notification in 10 years ( ) if you are still "watching" this topic and someone posts in it.

[Nodaz]

so there is another thread floating around somewhere that was split off form my original with a recent post that i was notified about?

My interest wasn't in the fact that i got notified, i understand i will always get notifications, but i appears that i just got notified about a post that was made in the thread 4 months ago, not that im still getting notifications at all
Here is what happened, i got notification yesterday ( two of them) that a NEW response had been posted in this thread, so i followed the link to see what new information had been brought to the table and found the most recent post to the thread was 4 months ago( which i had already seen, 4 months ago) why then was i getting notification of "new post"?

[margarett]

Here's the split topic:
http://www.simplemachines.org/community/index.php?topic=519551.0

It was split yesterday. So Kindred (probably) replied and then split the topic, this serving 2 notifications: one for the post for _sebas_ and then another by Kindred

[Nodaz]

ok, now it makes sense.  Thank you