RECAPTCHA Integration

[Chadm1n]

Hi All,

I finally had enough of the nonsense with the bogus registrations and integrated RECAPTCHA into the registration flow. Granted, this won't directly impact any of our registered users, but I am hoping it will have a chilling effect on the spambot activity.

-cec

[Rob]

Is that why I've had to delete like 30 spam accounts today?  :D

Here's to no more spambots... ever... for anyone.... >:(

[Chadm1n]

Dude, no joke! I was wondering if you had kicked off an ad campaign or something - the traffic levels today have been substantially elevated with a lot of bogus registration attempts.

I also changed the registration settings so that admins have to approve new members. It won't prevent bogus registrations, but it should cut down on the nonsensical postings.

-cec

[Rob]

Between our two forums I have now deleted over 60 accounts. THIS. IS. MADNESS. What did you DooOOOOOOOoooooooooOOOOOOOOOO!? ??? :'( :o

[Chadm1n]

I didn't do anything - I am merely reacting to what I am seeing on the servers. The site is definitely being targeted by someone or something. Google and PW show just a modest jump in the last 24 hours. The server logs, however, tell a much different story - over the past 24 hours, we've seen 6x our normal traffic load with most of that traffic being targeted as registrations. Server performance is fine, but the nuisance factor with the registrations is a little aggravating.

If this keeps up, I will look at integrating some additional defensive measures.

Oh yeah, for our Russian and/or North Korean bot friends reading this post: bring it you commie bitches. I can't stop you from trying to get in, but I can sure as hell sink your bandwidth. I pay a flat monthly rate. Do you??  ;)

-cec

[Rob]

When I went to bed I had cleared them all out. I just woke up to 46 new accounts spread across both sites and unlike this forum they are getting in over at Remedial Comics and making posts because we haven't set that to admin approval.

Maybe their mission is to show that Recaptcha is their bitch? :-\

[Chadm1n]

I dunno man... I don't think it has anything to do with the integration of RECAPTCHA. I added RECAPTCHA to help deal with what I saw as a marked increase in bogus registrations. Traffic jumped quite a bit over the past 30 hours or so, with most of it aimed at registrations and spamming.

I added a few defensive measures to both forums and switched registrations back to member activation. I also looped in the firewall in a manner that will drag things out a bit and make it significantly more computationally expensive for those who host the bots. They may still get in, but those who do will have spent some serious cycles to do so.

[Rob]

Yeah I've searched high and low and it's just baffling. Nothing much has seemed to change except suddenly spammers. I had another 50 or so waiting for approval when I woke up. Seems like someone already took care of them but they keep dribbling in.