System Upgrades and Spammers!

[Domino]

As of late last night we are running the latest versions of forum software with a new version coming soon.



There has been an influx in spammer registrations. Many have registered and remained idle. Likely to spam another day. Unfortunately the forum upgrades did not stop the spammers registration bots as we had hoped!! There is still a new registration attempt every ~10 minutes. As of 9:40am this morning, an anti spam-bot code was added to the forum. This is doing a great job of blocking the spammers so far. 100% would be nice, but there is a possibility for the odd one to get through. As of 11:00am 12 spam-bots have been blocked from registering!! <img src='http://www.canadianhummerclub.com/forum ... /smile.png' class='bbc_emoticon' alt=':)' />



All spammer accounts have been deleted. During this process, there is a possibility that a legitimate new user has been mistakenly deleted. Sometimes its hard to distinguish the difference. If you have been deleted, please re-register. It is helpful if you fill out your profile information to aid us in determining your authenticity.



Thank you for your patience while we brought this under control. Thanks to the hard work of our Moderators as they managed to keep the forum usable while we were under attack.



For those that are interested, I have added a new statistic to the statistics area on the main forum page. It will now disclose how many spammers we have blocked to date.

[normsadler]

Oh thank you! Keep up the great work!

[Autumn Walker]

New theme looks great, good work!



I admin another 4x4 forum (local to Nova Scotia) also running IPB. I stopped 100% of spam by simply asking a challenge question on the registration page - spam bots cannot interpret the input field and fail the registration process. It is a built in feature with IPB.

[Archngel]

Just a note, ,can you put some colour on the top line (top header) where messages, user, and sign in are,, presently its white and all writing are in light greymakes it difficult to read or see. <img src='http://www.canadianhummerclub.com/forum ... >/wink.png' class='bbc_emoticon' alt=';)' />

other than that love the new look. <img src='http://www.canadianhummerclub.com/forum ... ght_on.gif' class='bbc_emoticon' alt=':right_on:' />

[dwaxman1]

[quote name='autumnwalker' timestamp='1353418114' post='41033']

New theme looks great, good work!



I admin another 4x4 forum (local to Nova Scotia) also running IPB. I stopped 100% of spam by simply asking a challenge question on the registration page - spam bots cannot interpret the input field and fail the registration process. It is a built in feature with IPB.

[/quote]



great idea, we have that actually two methods but somehow they were still getting around it..anyways we have control on it now and added some other security features to protect the forum, club and of course our members.. we will continue to add back some of the old features as well as some great new stuff too..



thanks for all your patience and all the great emails, texts..

[Domino]

[quote name='autumnwalker' timestamp='1353418114' post='41033']

New theme looks great, good work!



I admin another 4x4 forum (local to Nova Scotia) also running IPB. I stopped 100% of spam by simply asking a challenge question on the registration page - spam bots cannot interpret the input field and fail the registration process. It is a built in feature with IPB.

[/quote]



Yes, that did work for a long time. We have a Challenge Question, they got around it. In an effort to stop them, I created a second question requiring a mathamatical answer, did not even slow them down!!



I'm not sure how they are getting around the Captcha and Challenge Questions, but they are. <img src='http://www.canadianhummerclub.com/forum ... t-argh.gif' class='bbc_emoticon' alt=':argh:' />



As Derek indicated, problem is now under control.

[Autumn Walker]

[quote name='Domino' timestamp='1353502743' post='41057']

Yes, that did work for a long time. We have a Challenge Question, they got around it. In an effort to stop them, I created a second question requiring a mathamatical answer, did not even slow them down!!



I'm not sure how they are getting around the Captcha and Challenge Questions, but they are. <img src='http://www.canadianhummerclub.com/forum ... t-argh.gif' class='bbc_emoticon' alt=':argh:' />



As Derek indicated, problem is now under control.

[/quote]



Resilient aren't they? The challenge question I am using asks a question about an image in our header - are yours purely text based? Perhaps they are able to read the question text?



Anyway, glad it is under control!