[12/12/06] Photo-Recognition Visual Confirmation

[MOD Robot]

MOD Name: Photo-Recognition Visual Confirmation
Author: Josh Yelon
MOD Description: To prove you are human, you look at photographs and check a box if they are pictures of animals.

The strength of this captcha is that the images are easily replaced. That means that everyone can have a custom captcha, with very little effort.


MOD Version: 1.0.1
Tested on phpBB Version: 2.0.21

Download File: photo-captcha-1.0.1a.zip
mods overview page: View
File Size: 495845 Bytes



Support for this MOD needs to be asked within this topic. The phpBB Teams are not responsible or required to give anyone support for this MOD. By installing this MOD, the phpBB Support Team or phpBB MODifications Team may not be able to provide support.

This MOD has only been tested by the phpBB MOD Team with the phpBB version listed in the topic. It may not work in any other versions of phpBB.

[MarkTheDaemon]

MOD Validated/Released

Notes:
This replaces the phpBB2 CAPTCHA with a photo recognition CAPTCHA.

[angelp1ay]

To prove you are human, you look at photographs and check a box if they are pictures of animals.

The strength of this captcha is that the images are easily replaced. That means that everyone can have a custom captcha, with very little effort.

I was quite excited when I first glanced this mod. Sadly I've since noticed a flaw.

This relies on a checkbox, and checkboxes only have two states - checked or unchecked. For a bot this means 50% success rate without even looking at the images.

Sorry for be so negative so early but I was hoping that if I raised this during the mods infancy then we could come up with a solution! There must be a way to get information from the user without giving multiple choice options that a bot could exploit.


Edit: Here's a thought. Have say 6 images - a dog, a car, a tree, a computer, a person, a picture of the sea (for example) - and ask the user to translate the order they appear in the images into a field.

There are 2 obvious methods that come to mind:

- the simpler route
36 checkboxes, 6 x 6 with 1st, 2nd, 3rd etc. along the top and dog, car, tree etc. along the side

- slightly more complicated but less multiple choice (less guessable for bots)
Assign each type of image a number 1 through 6, provide a text box into which the user enter their 6 digit number (ordered as the images are ordered)

[angelp1ay]

*bump*

So what do you think?

I think with a little alteration I think this could be the best bot stopping mod or them all!

[mrclay]

This relies on a checkbox, and checkboxes only have two states - checked or unchecked. For a bot this means 50% success rate without even looking at the images.

The mod uses 20 checkboxes, so the chance of blindly guessing correctly is extremely low (1/2^20). Yes, this should be mentioned in the release announcement.

[angelp1ay]

This relies on a checkbox, and checkboxes only have two states - checked or unchecked. For a bot this means 50% success rate without even looking at the images.

The mod uses 20 checkboxes, so the chance of blindly guessing correctly is extremely low (1/2^20). Yes, this should be mentioned in the release announcement.

Well that's pretty good then!

...and check a box if they are pictures of animals.

I obviously misinterpreted this as one set of pictures, all animals or not with a single checkbox to make your choice - in retrospect I must have been asleep when I posted.

I do also like the fact you can change the images I'll install this later...

Cheers for the info mrclay!!

[Netyver]

Do not look further for a stop spam mod. This is the choice.

I experienced lots of complains from my users, due to lots of spam messages. First, I installed another mod wich asked to the users, left blank the profile info, since most spam bots use to fill out some fields.

That mod worked ok, for a few days, but I discovered some spam bots do not fill out the profile form, so some of them posted spamm messages in my PHPBB board, anyway.

But, when I installed Josh Yelon´s Photo-Recognition Visual Confirmation mode, the game was over. I have with this mod 1 month, and I´ve recieved ZERO spamm posts, so I free up my time. It was time consuming to delete the spam messages every day, but not anymore.

I reinstalled the mod with the new PHPBB 2.0.22 release and worked fine.

So, I´m so excited for this mod, that is the only reason I registered at PHPBBB, but of course will participate in other topics in the future.

The only drawn back of this mod is, You should be very careful on copy and paste. I did some mistakes that drove me crazy while upgrading to PHPBB 2.0.22. But was my fault.

Also, I haven´t change the original photos of this mod yet. But for the sake of security, I´ll do it within 2 weeks.

So, feel confident on installing this mod and say good bye to the russian spammers.

[minimalpoet]

Looks, really nice. Thanx! I will install it also

[colin_bb]

I think i'll download this. But i've got a question before i do - is there any way to make it work as well as the phpbb captcha? I replaced the standard one with BetterCaptcha mod, and would like as many anti-bot tools on registration as i can.

[freddie]

when you've installed better captcha, you can't install this MOD following the install file; the result will be messed up

[freddie]

is it possible to add this type of captcha for guest-posting ?

[nincehelser]

I like this mod, but 20 pictures seems a bit much. 5 pictures might be enough. Wouldn't that be a 1 in 32 chance of guessing randomly?

I've been able to hack the code enough to only display 5 images, but I haven't been able to find the piece that only checks 5 images.

It would be nice if the number of rows and columns could be set by the administrator.

Thanks
George

[rauz242]

This would've been great if you were able to use it without the GD Extension, which I can't install at the webhost of my choice...

[backagain]

i installed this but i get this message when i submit


The confirmation code you entered was incorrect


anyone know why i might be getting this ?

[nincehelser]

>i installed this but i get this message when i submit
>The confirmation code you entered was incorrect
>anyone know why i might be getting this ?

I was having this problem right after I did the mod, but then it "magically" went away.

I'm guessing it might have something to do with the state of my browser cache right after installing. You might try it from a different machine or clear you browser cache to see if the problem goes away.

George