Resetting member ID count and spam bots

Started by MH-MINI, January 04, 2011, 08:25:33 AM

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MH-MINI

Hello,

Someone registered on my forum when it wasn't even open to the public yet on a new domain. [Most likely a spam bot]

This members' ID is 2. How can I delete that member such that the next member who registers will have the ID 2?

Also I've noticed quite a lot of spam bot registering on some of my SMF installations recently. They have image verification [on medium] and email verification. How are they then registering? :\

Thanks

Illori

you can not easily reset the member id counter, and it is not recommended to try. for spam/bot protection take a look here http://custom.simplemachines.org/mods/index.php?action=search;type=19


Arantor

QuoteThey have image verification [on medium] and email verification. How are they then registering? :\

Bots are smart - SMF 1's image verification has long been solvable by machine. (So has SMF 2's) and email validation isn't hard to do either, since the bot could likely have signed up the account already...


MH-MINI

Quote from: Illori on January 04, 2011, 08:31:15 AM
you can not easily reset the member id counter, and it is not recommended to try.

Even for a new forum which has no content? No harm in trying is there?

Illori

most users dont care what id they are given anyway, i dont off hand know a way to reset the counter to start at a lower number. you can try searching on this forum and with google but I dont see how it would be easy to do unless you know a lot of coding. as always make sure you do a backup before you attempt.

Arantor

You can reset it with a single SQL command if you have access to phpMyAdmin, but unless you know what you're doing it really isn't recommended.

Assuming it's ONLY the members table that is affected, ALTER TABLE smf_members AUTO_INCREMENT = 2; would do it, but take a backup first, and be aware that there may be other latent issues that emerge after.

Baby Daisy

I was about to suggest altering the auto increment as IncognitoMouse suggested, lol.

Installing anti-spam mods seems to be the trend.
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MH-MINI

I have a better idea. I think I'll take charge of that account and make it my 'test' account. Thanks for the spam bot stuff. I'll check it out ;)

How do these bots break the image verification? Shouldn't SMF update its configuration if it's now well known the SMF image verification can easily be cracked? It's just a burden on users now then...

Arantor

How they break it? Simple: they have OCR tools built in.

Even 2.0's is breakable now, even on High, even quite repeatably. SMF should replace it sometime, but as I can attest, writing CAPTCHAs is hard.

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