What about a bike-related question to stop spammers from getting accounts?
- Thread starter sanjuro
- Start date
That's a good idea.
You should make it so that it's even more subjective:
Which company makes the best bike forks?
Which company makes the best bike forks?
Ya, and if they say Manitou, we IP block them
I think a series of questions would be best, because they could be lucky and pick the right answer (with one question).
Time intensive for the mods, but a free-response question would work well in my opinion.
There are systems that will display hard to read image files of numbers and letters and you just type it in. Simple, all automated, only a bot cant do it.
I freakin' hate those things. I'm pretty much color blind and sometimes I can't see all the digits.
I dont understand the secure aspect of that; cant anyone who is hacking in copy the letters in?
Most of the spammers are bots that automagically complete forms and join to post one or 2 things. Those "security" features make it so that a real person has to be involved.
As chico pointed out tho, they are a royal pain in the ass, especially if you are color blind as many of them work on the same principles eye doctors use to see if you are color blind.
Ahhh...thanks for the info!
Not only that but they are overkill in a lot of cases. If the spammers bot fails to sign up on a single forum they won't bother to work out why. There are thousands of other forums they can spam with no effort.
There are lots of ways to break the spammers bots that don't have accessability problems.
If they're too simple, programs/scripts could easily be written to "read" what is on them.
By making them complex and extremely variable from site to site, it prevents such programs from being written and widely circulated.
yeah, but they hurt my head!
Slightly off topic, but I use a similar method to avoid scammers when selling online. I ask a simple question about the topic that whatever it is I'm selling relates to and you must answer in the subject line or I don't bother with your response. Scammers never read the whole listing so it seems to work pretty well.
For example when selling a bike "How many wheels are on a bicycle?" if the subject lines doesn't have the word or number 2 in it, I assume it's a scam.
For example when selling a bike "How many wheels are on a bicycle?" if the subject lines doesn't have the word or number 2 in it, I assume it's a scam.