ReCaptcha for Forum Accounts?

[Seathre 33]

I've seen bots spamming the forum a couple times now, and the reason I see for this happening is that no captcha is required when creating a BI account. Please pass this suggestion on to the proper individual(s) at Bohemia, it's really frustrating to see this forum be plastered with spam posts.

 

If you support this, please make sure to up vote this suggestion. 

Edited January 10, 2018 by Seathre

[6Cowa6Bunga6 55]

You have just been upvoted

[Seathre 33]

1 minute ago, 6Cowa6Bunga6 said:

You have just been upvoted

Please read the bottom of my thread. lol

There's a difference between reacting and upvoting in this section of the forum. Upvoting using the correct button will make this suggestion more visible.

[6Cowa6Bunga6 55]

No, im not gonna read the bottem of your thread

[Seathre 33]

I do however hope this is addressed soon, since the spammers just keep on spamming. When mods aren't on especially, it seems to get quite bad.

[kimbuck 746]

They seem to have  found an exploit... perhaps there should  be captcha  introduced  for  any  forum posts  for  posters with less than  10  posts...

Might be a pain for some of  us   but  its  more preferable to seeing  garbage from some nutter who thinks we would  bother to seek advice from him.

[Seathre 33]

53 minutes ago, kimbuck said:

They seem to have  found an exploit... perhaps there should  be captcha  introduced  for  any  forum posts  for  posters with less than  10  posts...

Might be a pain for some of  us   but  its  more preferable to seeing  garbage from some nutter who thinks we would  bother to seek advice from him.

There's no exploit, it's simply the fact that no form of spam prevention is required to make an account, therefore it's very easy for any botnet to register accounts and post spam. All they need to do is require a captcha on account creation, then the problem will be solved.

 

EDIT: Oh look, it's Love Specialist Baba Ji

Edited January 10, 2018 by Seathre

[Ane 1213]

We have no captcha on account creation, but if they’re able to post on the forums, that means the captcha is not an issue for them (we have other spam prevention measures).

I could limit the amount of posts registered users can write per day, for example, but that already proved to be problematic for regular users too.

[Seathre 33]

4 minutes ago, Ane said:

We have no captcha on account creation, but if they’re able to post on the forums, that means the captcha is not an issue for them (we have other spam prevention measures).

I could limit the amount of posts registered users can write per day, for example, but that already proved to be problematic for regular users too.

If your spam prevention measures utilize a database, such as StopForumSpam, or other similar services, it's certainly not very reliable. This is just my opinion, however I feel using something like Google's ReCaptcha is the most reliable solution, and is typically not a terrible burden for users. Unless something like that is implemented, I'm afraid these bots are going to continue capitalizing on the situation.

[Seathre 33]

4 hours ago, Ane said:

We have no captcha on account creation, but if they’re able to post on the forums, that means the captcha is not an issue for them (we have other spam prevention measures).

I could limit the amount of posts registered users can write per day, for example, but that already proved to be problematic for regular users too.

Okay, so I see there is a ReCaptcha required for new accounts when they post or make a new thread, but we can see that's not working for whatever reason. My question now is, how are these bots making accounts? Are they using Bohemia's account system, or are they signing in via another service (e.g. Steam, Google, Twitter, etc.)? Is ReCaptcha required for all accounts under a certain number of posts, or only accounts made using Bohemia's account system? If it's the latter, they could just have a bunch of accounts, maybe Google accounts, made for this specific purpose. That would make it easy for them to continuously change account, change IP address, then sign in again to continue posting.

 

Edit: Feel free to merge this post with the above post, didn't realize I was the last one to post on this thread.

Edited January 10, 2018 by Seathre

[kimbuck 746]

Today i felt  bored.   I  took a break  from 2 hours of  Ylands and  noticed that our  friendly  Love Guru had h is   subjects repeating their  spam mantra on the forums ... so for  fun i spent some time down-voting  every post  ..poster now has a reputation of   -22   

Is there a  down-vote limit  which would see  such a poster with so many  down votes get some sort of  penalty..or   auto ban?

 

[V-Alfred 367]

The bots start to spread in another sub forum, if this problem not solved soon enough, they will eventually overwhelming the forum posts.  hope it gets fixed soon.

Edited January 11, 2018 by Velocifer

[YadNiMonde 191]

4 hours ago, kimbuck said:

Today i felt  bored.   I  took a break  from 2 hours of  Ylands and  noticed that our  friendly  Love Guru had h is   subjects repeating their  spam mantra on the forums ... so for  fun i spent some time down-voting  every post  ..poster now has a reputation of   -22   

Is there a  down-vote limit  which would see  such a poster with so many  down votes get some sort of  penalty..or   auto ban?

 

And i did help on that too, those babaji gurus mumbo jumbo spammers are most annoying and i have had quite some fun hunting and downvoting them for a couple hours too as well as reporting the incriminating posts while i was at it.

[handofthesly 211]

I’ve been doing the same.

Would there be any way to even just change the settings so that users can’t create new thread/topics more than like 3 a day? Other than admins/devs of course. I’m not sure even the most active users are creating more than 3 new topics a day.

Edited January 11, 2018 by handofthesly

[kimbuck 746]

Hi Yadni!   yes -  you have met me  in Inworldz ...as the infamous  Honey Chicken   glad to see you bringing  some of  your   expertise to here.

Actually  it  was   quite fun down voting those posts .. i am sure they will come back ...like the  fake microsoft   and IRS and  insurance scammers.

 

[kimbuck 746]

Perhaps new accounts   can  be limited in their  posting  for the first day..and  if  excessive posting   block  further posts until a  Mod  approves?

[Ane 1213]

I limited the post count per day at some point and several regular users were affected by it too, but I might have to do it again, at least until they get tired and go somewhere else (it looks like we're not the only ones that have this issue with this type of spam, the Spotify forums and others are being flooded with the same type of spam too). Plus it looks like these are not bots, but actual people doing this, so the regular captchas and similar stuff won't work.

BTW, downvoting the posts doesn't really have any effect, we see and delete all the posts anyway (but if you find it fun, why not )

[kimbuck 746]

could it  be   made   that  10   downvotes in a day  blocks that user?  ..until a  Mod  reviews it?

 

[kimbuck 746]

maybe  find the range of  IP addresses involved and lock them out  for a  day or  two? ...  or  arrange  for  some Ylands  NPC's  to  fly to Mumbai  or wherever and  unleash  some Ylands wolves and  bears   ...

[YadNiMonde 191]

1 hour ago, kimbuck said:

could it  be   made   that  10   downvotes in a day  blocks that user?  ..until a  Mod  reviews it?

 

Now THAT is the idea that needs to be worked on !!!

[Excelsior 2]

Mods, there is a simpler back-end solution that I use on my page that stops these posts in their tracks. Nobody that is an actual person would ever notice anything different on their login process. Willing to share, just PM me and I can help out.

[Seathre 33]

15 hours ago, kimbuck said:

could it  be   made   that  10   downvotes in a day  blocks that user?  ..until a  Mod  reviews it?

 

I could see that being easily abused, even unknowingly. Just because a post is downvoted, the user shouldn't be blocked. When the forum gets bigger, I can definitely imagine it being relatively easy for an active user to get that many downvotes on a singe post in one day.

[kimbuck 746]

@Seathre ..its a difficult subject... and yes it could be abused... but  something needs to be  done...  and  its better to talk and  discuss and let the forum  mods  decide. However  by  voicing  ideas,  we bring the  matter to their attention.

The Devs  obviously want to  put all their efforts into improving the game .. its a shame that their attention is being divided because of these spammers.

Hopefully the "love  guru"   whose spamming takes  his own advice...and   moves on

[kimbuck 746]

The down vote suggestion  ......    ...yes it could be abused. Any  form of moderation should NOT be  controlled by the  posters...only the forum owners.

To clarify the suggestion..  a single post would need to have 10 down votes....as a poster can only  down vote once, it would require 10 different   forum posters  to down vote that post and that should raise a red flag  to the  forum mods.

If a poster gets one down vote on every post... then the  mods can assume there's  some dislike or agenda against the  poster  by the  down-voter.

Never, ever  should posters be allowed to moderate a forum... that's like  putting   squirrels  in charge  of the nut-house