The bb now has a ‘captcha’ thingy for new registrations. The half dozen suspects that I’ve splashed in the last two days have obviously passed that little test, so I presume this means that they’re not bots, but live spammers. Is this correct? Or are bots somehow getting past the ‘captcha’ thingy?
The standard way to bypass reCAPTCHA is to farm it out to real people using either fake porn sites or things like Amazon Mechanical Turk.
The old BB had reCAPTCHA, too, but it was an add-on rather than a core phpBB feature which presumably meant fewer bots recognized it.
An acquaintance who used to work in "marketing" - used to pay Eastern European students a few pence per website/forum that they joined as a new member with a particular ID so that he could push his marketing on them at a later date (we have hundreds of zero posting members and while I'm sure some of them are just shy lurkers I bet there's a fair number that are accounts set up for this very reason and just never "activated")
I noticed! I see one that looks a bit dodgy and by the time I've made decision I get the "that user doesn't exist message" I just wander off and sharpen my sword on my beak (or is that the other way round?)
I just wander off and sharpen my sword on my beak (or is that the other way round?)
Ha! Please don't make me laugh... laughing makes me cough, and that hurts!
<finishes casual preening> Apologies - all humour unintentional! Get well soon! (I'm feeling much better today - I don't have to hold my ribs or the top of my head when I cough - this is progress!)
we have hundreds of zero posting members and [while] I'm sure some of them are just shy lurkers
The obvious benefit to registering is that you can keep track of unread posts and other such stuff. There's enough added functionality available to registered users - particularly now with the upgrade - that I can easily see why people would register even if they have no intention to ever post.
"Actually this is a common misconception... I do *not* in fact have a lot of time on my hands at all! I just have a very very very very bad sense of priorities."
--Dean C Engelhardt
It should be possible, either by setting or by adding an extension, to make zero-post users expire after a certain amunt of time. We have that installed on another board that I moderate, and it's quite useful for keeping the place neat and tidy and spam-free.
But I know what you mean about a new-year upsurge in spammers. I seem to have spent a large lump of the past week nuking rogue accounts.
I just wander off and sharpen my sword on my beak (or is that the other way round?)
