reCaptcha has been deciphered by the spam bots

EverQuest related news and other things relevant to all members.
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Jedis
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reCaptcha has been deciphered by the spam bots

Post by Jedis »

This was working quite well, but a few weeks ago, the pesky spammers figured out how to decode the reCaptcha spam prevention we're using here on the site.

I'm waiting on Google to fix it, so in the mean time, I added trivia questions to the registration page to prevent an automated spam bot from being able to sign up. We'll see if that works any better. I may need to make some of the questions tougher, but we'll see.

I apologize in advance if any spammers slip through the cracks - you'll see their names pop up in the "newest members" box on the portal. They might be able to register, but everyone with less than five posts is set to go through the moderation queue before their post shows up. This should at least keep the board clean.

Let me know if you notice any issues.
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Bastler
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Re: reCaptcha has been deciphered by the spam bots

Post by Bastler »

Thanks for your continued effords to keep our new home free of vermin.
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Tweelis
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Re: reCaptcha has been deciphered by the spam bots

Post by Tweelis »

I know the board software was just upgraded so this may or may not be possible but can there be some kind of question people need to answer in order to create an account? Maybe something like:

Which are starting player cities in EQ:
Chicago
Cresent Reach
Walla Walla
Ogguk
Kelethin
Barindu

and make it so the person (or bot) attempting to register would have to select C, Ogguk and Kelethin in order to create an account.
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Cindayen1234
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Re: reCaptcha has been deciphered by the spam bots

Post by Cindayen1234 »

You are doing an awesome job of keeping the crap outta here, very smart indeed. I wish other forums would think of things like this.
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Cindayen1234
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Re: reCaptcha has been deciphered by the spam bots

Post by Cindayen1234 »

The whole idea of having to know about the forum topic to make an account is awesome. Its a great idea that I wish other forums would do. Would make things spam free I believe.
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svenalo
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Re: reCaptcha has been deciphered by the spam bots

Post by svenalo »

In order to defeat a bot, the questions would have to be randomized and answers presented in such a way that you couldn't guess or predetermine the result. Having the same thing every time is no different than having nothing at all - it would take them about as long as it takes to read this thread to code for it and deploy a new spambot.
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Jedis
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Re: reCaptcha has been deciphered by the spam bots

Post by Jedis »

The registration question is drawn from a pool of questions and is randomized each time. Right now I have about 15 questions in there and Danille made me a list of a few more to add.

If anyone wants to add to the list of questions/answers, feel free to PM me and I can add them to the pool. Need to include any singular/plural variations on the answer, so that as a new user would not get frustrated trying to guess an answer.

It looks like it's working, at least temporarily, as there haven't been any spam users created since implemented.
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Jedis
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Re: reCaptcha has been deciphered by the spam bots

Post by Jedis »

Tweelis wrote:I know the board software was just upgraded so this may or may not be possible but can there be some kind of question people need to answer in order to create an account? Maybe something like:

Which are starting player cities in EQ:
Chicago
Cresent Reach
Walla Walla
Ogguk
Kelethin
Barindu

and make it so the person (or bot) attempting to register would have to select C, Ogguk and Kelethin in order to create an account.
This is what it is doing except the answer has to be manually filled in. If it was multiple choice, they could easily determine the correct answers. It has to be simple enough for someone newer to EQ can easily find the answer, or we risk losing new members. At that point, I might as well just turn off new user registrations, as it would essentially accomplish the same thing. So, most of the answers can be found using Google, however, if they want to goto so much trouble as finding the answers to our questions, I would feel honored our little website is important enough to spam. Then I can just add even more questions to the pool.
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Sirulus Delon
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Joined: Sun May 17, 2009 6:47 pm

Re: reCaptcha has been deciphered by the spam bots

Post by Sirulus Delon »

Haha, dude I got stuck trying to log in. I could not remember my password (eventually I gave up and had it reset). The current model that you have adopted for the captcha should be a bit harder to figure out.
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Jedis
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Re: reCaptcha has been deciphered by the spam bots

Post by Jedis »

Sirulus Delon wrote:Haha, dude I got stuck trying to log in. I could not remember my password (eventually I gave up and had it reset). The current model that you have adopted for the captcha should be a bit harder to figure out.
I made it easy intentionally, as I did not want to stump new people from registering on the site. A bunch of people came back for the progression servers and if the questions were too difficult, they might have never been able to register.

In the last 9 days, only 5 new accounts were created. With the Google reCaptcha in place, we were getting at least 5 spam registrations per day. So far, I'd have to say it is working just fine. If it becomes problematic in the future, the questions can easily be changed or made harder ;)
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