Usering users more then one time using same ip address

[a10]

Forget about ip's. Have tried that route in the past, even .htaccess'ing all of cn, ru, ua etc, too much to keep control over and ultimately made more trouble than good. Also, Captcha is useless.

A dozen or more good questions, 3 active = zero spam registrations. Using 'Admin approval' on top and checking suspicious ip\email will stop any human bots (just 2 or 3 a year here). Am using no other anti-spam measures.

The system on my forum, many years without a single auto-bot registration

[Kindred]

yup... those questions are pretty much useless.

[chrishicks]

Joe,

Just a suggestion but if you attach your managemembers.php file to the Stop Spammer topic I'm sure someone would make the manual changes for you so you can use the mod. There is a good group of people here that are willing to help if you let them. They have helped me numerous times through the years.

And in regards to your registration questions. Are those the only 3 you have? I refreshed the registration page a good dozen times and they never changed. If that's the case they've most likely been figured out and need to be changed like others have said. Make sure to look at the link a10 provided as that is the method I use and it makes a huge difference.

[tpgames]

In addition to having a good list of 20 questions that your users can figure out the answer too...

You set up a different forum in a sub-domain where by all people who want to register must go to.
They then have to post a legit post. And, if they pass inspection - have a different IP address, then...
"you" manually add them to your forum, and send them the details.

This will stop all spammers because they will not be able to spam your board. They will be sent
to another forum to spam. I would just explain that only legit users will be allowed full access to the forum.
I would also have this forum be the same theme as the real forum. This way, it looks very legit.

You could also have the requirement that 3 legit users have to sponsor a new person, in order for them to get a invite to join. You would still be manually adding them to your forum. 

[Kindred]

tpgames -- that is an incredibly time-consuming and unnecessary way to do things.

As I said - I have not had a single spammer in several years -- and there is nothing like the overhead that you suggest.

[bigjoe11a]

Then all of you have me so lost I don't know what to do. I keep getting emails letting me know some one registered. and they have to be people, Right? Well the next day the start spamming my board. I have to go in and ban them, and then I just delete the account.

Most of these people must be new to spamming or making money on it. what ever comes 1st. The only problem I have is that I need some way to keep them off.

I will try your ideas and let you know. All so my ManageMembers.php is attached. So I don't know is any one can edit it so that it will work.

Joe

[Kindred]

your best defense is to add a pool of 20 questions, asking 2-3 of them per registration.

some good mods are
Stop Spammer
Bad bevaior + httpBL

You can also install the anti-spam link mod...   which can be set to prevent people with fewer than X posts from posting links.

when a mod fails to install automatically, it's usually because another mod has already modified that section of code.
In general, it's a straight forward task to find the code spot and add the mod changes.
Unfortunately, I am accessing from mobile, so I can not edit your file for you.

[bigjoe11a]

your best defense is to add a pool of 20 questions, asking 2-3 of them per registration.

some good mods are
Stop Spammer
Bad bevaior + httpBL

You can also install the anti-spam link mod...   which can be set to prevent people with fewer than X posts from posting links.

when a mod fails to install automatically, it's usually because another mod has already modified that section of code.
In general, it's a straight forward task to find the code spot and add the mod changes.
Unfortunately, I am accessing from mobile, so I can not edit your file for you.

What I did was sense your last message 6 more people have registered on my board. 3 or them spammed the crap out of it. and what I decided to do it change the registration on  it and change it to "Approval by Admin". So I'll have to do it by hand.

until someone comes up with a better idea. The problem with adding 20 questions for users to register. Most of them won't even bother. even the ones that are good posters. So I don't think that's a good idea. Are you still even getting people to register.

[Kindred]

you are, again, not reading carefully.

you need a POOL of 20 questions.
You only ask 2-3 at registration.

The pool roates the questions which prevents the spam bots from cataloguing the answers and then auto-answering them after that....

[chrishicks]

You don't need to have all 20 questions showing at once. On my forum I currently have around a dozen questions(I'm still adding them every so often) and I only ask one during registration. The idea for 20(or even more) is that they will rotate so people won't get the same question every time they try to register. When I first updated to 2.0 I only used a single simple question(last word in my websites name) which stopped spammers from fully registering but after about a week or two they "cracked" my answer and then the swarm started up again. At that point I took some time and looked at better options for my questions. That's when I discovered a10's post(the link he posted above) and added about 6 or 7 questions in the way he described and my spam registrations pretty much stopped. I'll still see maybe 1 or 2 get through in a months time but then they get caught by the Stop Spammer mod so they never get to post anything on the forum anyway.

[bigjoe11a]

No wonder I was having a hard time under standing you. Ok, I didn't know that the questions can rotate. How ever I did add some more questions and tried it. and the questions don't seem to be rotating. Is there a check box I need to check, Or does it rotate all by it self.

And I could use some more sample questions.

Joe

[Kindred]

Enter a bunch of espionage, but leave the number count at 2

[chrishicks]

For a few questions you could try something like:

Enter only the letters in the following: 38Au627bz - to which the answer would be aubz (the question type a10 recommended)

You could randomly make up 5-6 more in a few minutes time. I also avoid using 1, I and l in my questions of this type because not everyone has perfect vision(I sure don't) and may see the wrong character. They aren't related to your forum but the above works wonders. And I'm seeing rotating questions on your registration page. I saw 7 or 8 different questions with about 15 page refreshes.

[bigjoe11a]

I tried to refresh my page and nothing happen. As long as your saying it works. that's fine. Thanks for the help,