Bots on Zetaboards

[fantanoice]

I've suddenly gotten a surge of spambots on my Zetaboards forums, hich luckily haven't been incredibly offensive, but I'd still like a way to avoid them. (At the moment they're only telling me how to convert files to iPod and such. Probably won't be long until they post porn and such.) <_< I read the topics for the phpbb3 spambots, but they aren't too helpful considering its a different type of software.

I used to have email validation on, but that caused problems with people using certain email addresses like hotmail and such. Many people had problems with the validation email being sent to their junk folder, or not being sent at all (which I now actually happens because I never received my "lost password" email from the support board.) <_< I also do not want to have to put on Admin Validation, because I, as a member, know how annoying it is trying to register to a forum with it activated.

I also tried the profile fields for registrations, but unlike phpbb3 there is no way to get an error from picking a certain field.

Any ideas?

 

[hcfwesker]

i got 4 of them last night, and they seem to be invading EVERYWHERE. it's not just you.

the things i've noticed, they always have their username as their email name , with a "gmail" account.

it's usually a convert DVD, or iPOD crap. it's been going on for about 2 weeks solid at my forum.

 

[CyberFreak]

To be honest other then what you have said i don't think there is anything you can do. I have set up a test zb forum and there are no options for CAPTCHA or anything (that i can see). The only thing i can think of is making a custom profile field and then setting it up like your current (Are you a spam bot one) and instead ask the user to actually enter yes or no. In the acp if you set the input max number to 3 then the spam bots might not know that the box is optional and instead enter something else in there more then 3 characters long. I haven't tried this though. As you can't set it so the field has to be filled in i don't know if the bots will just leave the field empty or try and enter something in there to guess.

 

[Anonymous]

Weird since I never have had a spam bot on my board...yep I also use Zeta.

 

[fantanoice]

Well, this is my first issue with spambots in over a year of using Zeta. =/
It is a little interesting to see the bots with "yes" in their "are you a spambot" field.

The only thing i can think of is making a custom profile field and then setting it up like your current (Are you a spam bot one) and instead ask the user to actually enter yes or no. In the acp if you set the input max number to 3 then the spam bots might not know that the box is optional and instead enter something else in there more then 3 characters long.

The problem there is, the minimum "maximum character length" (if that makes sense) is 5. =/

Mmm, I'll check with the support boards sometime tomorrow. I'll have to re-register, due to the failure of their lost password recovery system.