[Discussion]Anti-bot System

[XxXGenesisXxX]

I know this has been talked about many times in the shoutbox, but I think a documentation style thread that many of the intelligent minds here could read over and throw their ideas or 2 cents in on how to help prevent it. Because having 50 conversations with 50 people in shoutbox leads to repeated solutions and denials.

This is the current online users:

Registered users: 1y2r0m2s4j, 5o0c9t3g7p, Annwc01k, canabalt, Codebreaker, dghhdfgfrty, fdv9fhg8d, mhaastvhr, nhjftyndg, noc, Pid9z2noc14, smelovsky.com, XxXGenesisXxX, yugf5h5hb1

The staff have done a great job at minimizing the spam, but eliminating it would be best.

Personally an option I think would work would be to add a generalized question regarding WoW modding to the registration page. Obviously a lot of bots can simply google answers like 2 + 2. But a generic question relating specifically to this forums like "What game is forum dedicated to?", would be easily answered without a bot being able to automatically guess it. Only way for it to guess it would be from manual implementation targeting this forum.

[Steff]

The problem is that the most bots are chinees once. Huamns. I had such a sytem for 2 days. Did not work.
In the moment I think a system where the user have to post a wellcome thread and hav onylö access to the welcome board and manual activation is the only working way.

What do you think?

[schlumpf]

Captchas of any type are bad:

• Actual users have a bad UX if they are unsure, mistype, are bothered at all.
• The user might not even know the answer, depending on the question and required knowledge (people suggested questions about ADTs etc, which clearly is over the top).
• classic image to text captchas are _all_ solved by machines or dedicated services, where spammers just buy 10000 solved captchas and don't give a damn.
• question as captchas are somewhat more safe, tend to be easily answered though, as well. Thus, there are -- surprise! -- services to solve them.

Secondary detection is way more successful: Bad words, URLs, mails; just deleting them automatically based on what they do. For example, there is a filter, deleting everyone setting their occupation in the profile. The spam filter for posts has a massive list of banned words as well.

Manual activation is horrible.

[Steff]

If the amount off real people getting to the board then its not so bad.
Also people dotn have to get nerved because no link posting work.

Or the other way that only users that post in teh houre after registeration an hello post stay. All other get deleted.
The few getting this also handled get deleted manual.

[schlumpf]

If the amount off real people getting to the board then its not so bad.

You still have to evaluate every single account manually, or you will start deleting real people's accounts.

Also people dotn have to get nerved because no link posting work.

There is not really a reason to post a link in your first posts.

Or the other way that only users that post in teh houre after registeration an hello post stay. All other get deleted.
The few getting this also handled get deleted manual.

You want to force people to write a post or they are deleted? Ever heard of people just reading stuff, but still using an account?

[XxXGenesisXxX]

When I said a question to be answered at registration, I meant something very simple, yet completely specific to this forum. Pretty much being something that has the accepted answers as WoW and World of Warcraft. But making the question general enough, that is isn't something to be "figured out" by a bot.

I like the idea of no links in the first post, but perhaps make it first 5 posts. As I don't see why someone that has made a measly 5 posts needs to be able to post links without permission like in the tutorial forum. It's not a big ask.

However I also somewhat agree with the whole post before having access idea, to a point though. However I think that is more of a leecher prevention than a bot prevention. As you are essentially setting up a forum for those bots to post in. Instead of random spam across the board, you are going to have flooded spam in the welcome/introduction forum.

Also, regarding both ideas, think if you had automated account deletion, a very clear statement at registration is needed to let potential human registrations know the potential actions taken if they do commit an act such as posting a link.

[schlumpf]

Also, regarding both ideas, think if you had automated account deletion, a very clear statement at registration is needed to let potential human registrations know the potential actions taken if they do commit an act such as posting a link.

I would never implement automatic deletion for something as simple as posts, but only for ensured only-by-bot actions, like editing a non-existent profile field.

[Eluo]

question as captchas are somewhat more safe, tend to be easily answered though, as well. Thus, there are -- surprise! -- services to solve them.

I actually have no clue at all how the captcha stuff works but:
How about making a list of diffent questions and only activate one question for a specific time. The questions would be made by the staff and would be active for lets say 4 days. If then the usercounter spikes again, then the question propably got solved by one of those services.
As soon as we notice an increase of spambots we can simply switch out the question/answer.
Doing this like every four days is way less work than keeping an eye on that many spambots.

[XxXGenesisXxX]

question as captchas are somewhat more safe, tend to be easily answered though, as well. Thus, there are -- surprise! -- services to solve them.

How about making a list of diffent questions and only activate one question for a specific time. The questons would be made by the staff and would be active for lets say 4 days. If then the usercounter spikes again, then the question propably got solved by one of those services.
As soon as we notice an increase of spambots we can simply switch out the question.

Sounds like a good idea, if it works. I don't know much about the bots, so I can't say much other than this idea may underestimate the bots. If the bots figure it out quickly and questions change quickly, you will find yourself either cycling through questions or running out of simple ones that don't confuse potential registrations. Both results not working in Modcrafts favor.

On the other hand, if it works, it does sound fairly manageable given the questions were of the correct nature (easy for humans, hard for bots).

[Ascathos]

The question list is limited to human imagination again. I'd be pretty sure that at some point, you have repetitive questions.  Which easily get figured out.

[schlumpf]

No great, but for me already enough data:

• Name of this Community?: 3 in 5 passed
• Complete . Nogg-XX: 1 in 5 passed

While I have no idea about if that were spambots or not, I don't want to risk losing 40% registrations, just because people are unable to enter "modcraft". The second one also is an example for a really horrible question, as it requires knowledge.

[Eluo]

While I have no idea about if that were spambots or not, I don't want to risk losing 40% registrations, just because people are unable to enter "modcraft".

Why not?
This is an english community and if someone can't handle this question, how will he handle the rest of the topics in here?
If someone is mentally not capable of reading and answering a question which does not require any previous knowledge, then in my opinion he can stay exluded from this community until he is ready to answer the question.

And i myself totally prefer those general and very simple to answer questions, instead of these cancerous image to text captchas.

[Steff]

You read that he posted that even if the question was active we had bots pasing it. I think its no bot, its a army of chinees guys getting some cents for creat an account and enter the data into the bot net. So every thing such easy we do will simple not work.

I don´t think that a bot can answer complet nogg-xx.