CJ Jackson

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Spambots
« on April 11th, 2011, 05:21 PM »
Unfortunately spambots have got through reCAPTCHA, fortunately, the email address they use are so random, none of them have Gravatar. Those spambots programmers thought they outsmarted me, but they failed because they overlooked Gravatar (which is probably blocked by the great firewall of China)  :D

What your opinion?

Arantor

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Re: Spambots
« Reply #1, on April 11th, 2011, 06:06 PM »
reCAPTCHA is long since too much a liability for my liking, if humans typically draw a 50% success rate (vs 25-30% success rate for bots), and the fact that it allows for off-by-one errors... no thanks.

We have a custom CAPTCHA that I wrote, draws 9 or so visibly distinct styles, including some animated ones. Sure, they're breakable, but not trivially or easily. It's been in use on arantor.org now since August and while I've had spammers sign up, I've had the grand total of 3 spam posts from a human spammer.

The other thing is that not everyone has a Gravatar, so while blog users (especially WP users/converts) will be fine, it's not a safe assumption for the purposes of combatting bots.

There are alternative methods, some of which have been integrated already ;)
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CJ Jackson

  • I got myself a new iPad, a different world to the iPhone!
  • Posts: 241
Re: Spambots
« Reply #2, on April 11th, 2011, 06:37 PM »
Quote from Arantor on April 11th, 2011, 06:06 PM
The other thing is that not everyone has a Gravatar, so while blog users (especially WP users/converts) will be fine, it's not a safe assumption for the purposes of combatting bots.
True, but it's seems to working quite well on my board. ;)

Arantor

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Re: Spambots
« Reply #3, on April 11th, 2011, 06:59 PM »
Yeah, I guess it depends on the board ;)

william777

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Re: Spambots
« Reply #4, on April 11th, 2011, 11:23 PM »
Quote from Arantor on April 11th, 2011, 06:06 PM
reCAPTCHA is long since too much a liability for my liking, if humans typically draw a 50% success rate (vs 25-30% success rate for bots), and the fact that it allows for off-by-one errors... no thanks.

We have a custom CAPTCHA that I wrote, draws 9 or so visibly distinct styles, including some animated ones. Sure, they're breakable, but not trivially or easily. It's been in use on arantor.org now since August and while I've had spammers sign up, I've had the grand total of 3 spam posts from a human spammer.

The other thing is that not everyone has a Gravatar, so while blog users (especially WP users/converts) will be fine, it's not a safe assumption for the purposes of combatting bots.

There are alternative methods, some of which have been integrated already ;)
I agree with you Arantor.
Is your version available to the public?

CJ Jackson

  • I got myself a new iPad, a different world to the iPhone!
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Re: Spambots
« Reply #5, on April 11th, 2011, 11:39 PM »
Yes it does, my board does not have any uploading facilities for avatar, so Gravatar is the only method. ;)

live627

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Re: Spambots
« Reply #6, on April 11th, 2011, 11:54 PM »
Quote from william777 on April 11th, 2011, 11:23 PM
Is your version available to the public?
Not any more. But there's an old copy installed on dp.net.
A confident man keeps quiet.whereas a frightened man keeps talking, hiding his fear.

chilly

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Re: Spambots
« Reply #7, on April 11th, 2011, 11:59 PM »
* chilly got that old version too :P
but there is only one site to get it from.

live627

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Nao

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Re: Spambots
« Reply #9, on April 12th, 2011, 12:15 AM »
3.5 :p

DoctorMalboro

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Re: Spambots
« Reply #10, on April 12th, 2011, 12:53 AM »
reCAPTCHA doesn't even have proper updates... seriously, there's always a retard saying "reCAPTCHA works. period." and it piss me off...

Nao

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Re: Spambots
« Reply #11, on April 12th, 2011, 12:28 PM »
Well, technically, that's true. (For software that works, of course.)

DoctorMalboro

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Re: Spambots
« Reply #12, on April 12th, 2011, 03:05 PM »
I would use akismet, that it is something more stable and it actually let you track the amount of spambots you have...

Nao

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Re: Spambots
« Reply #13, on April 12th, 2011, 04:20 PM »
That's one answer for Pete I believe ;)

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DoctorMalboro

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Re: Spambots
« Reply #14, on April 12th, 2011, 04:22 PM »
Any good antispam measure taken on wedge? I mean, would you add spinning and flying captchas or captchas which the only way to pass through it is singing ABBA's songs (is widely known that spambots can't sing ABBA's songs).