Maximum PC

http://www.maximumpc.com/forums/viewtop ... highlight=

http://www.maximumpc.com/forums/viewtop ... highlight=

http://www.maximumpc.com/forums/viewtop ... highlight=

http://www.maximumpc.com/forums/viewtop ... highlight=

Anyway we can make the registration process more difficult or force the entry of email verification or entry codes?

On my forum i use a advanced "captcha" system basically displays numbers which must be typed into a box to register each one is unique. Basically the spam bots are php scripts.

that is what this and about a billion other forums, and every major forum software does

That is probably an actual person (an asshat), but still a living breathing person doing it. Otherwise it would probably be a lot worse.

http://xkcd.com/c233.html

We already have a captcha system in place. It's just not enough.

"They'd use that Futurama episode with Fry's dog, but even robots cry at that"

I love that comic haha..

:p that's standard for almost any forum, including this one. Go look at the registration form.

The more members a forum has, the more SPAM attacks it receives from real people taking the time to go through the registration process to post their crap. The mods/admins aren't on here 24/7 as real life calls them to do other things just like yours. They catch them quick enough and I'm sure the accounts are deleted and the email addy's blocked.

Try a system like on bsodtv.org forums where it asks you to click on certain pictures, although this could probably be exploited with a quick jscript.

K1u, to reiterate what Quakindude said, the problem isn't always bots anymore. It's real people sitting in front of computers beign paid to make posts on forums. They have a quota to fill of posts to make per day, and forums to hit per day.

Theres no real way to evade those kinds of attacks other than having mods who are around all the time and take things down as fast as spammers can put them up. The guys here are going a great job, but they all have lives outside of the forums that keep them from sitting and waiting for spam all day.

I think we're (for the most part) gonna have to learn to live with it.

We need to find a way of sending some sort of feedback through the 'net that melts their modem/erases their hd/causes their monitor to show reruns of Mork and Mindy.

A few times the mods gave us their IP's so we could ping 'em but they don't seem to be consistent enough (the spammers, that is) to bother.

Another likely possibility is that they are using zombied machines when they come from inside North America. Even having their IPs doesn't do us much good, since they are probably hosed to begin with