Brilliant idea? Stopping wowgold spammers

[stevemaury]

This was probably thought of before, but I am so proud of it I had to share.

I see many human spammers trying to get wowgold. If you have a board that is only in a foreign language, add a custom profile field required at registration which asks a question in your language and requires an answer in your language, preferably something that only speakers of that language would be likely to know.

Presumably, the vast majority of these wowgold spammers speak a language other than yours, so they would have to translate and look up the answer. I am betting most won't bother.

Obviously, this will work better for, say, Urdu than for, say, Spanish.

EDIT - And obviously, this only works with Admin activation, because there is no way to require a particular answer in a text field.

[Jim_UK]

A good idea Steve.
From what I have seen these Wow Gold spammers are human. If not then it would be the only bot to get through registration on my site in over 2 years. Assuming they are human then ok with your idea.
What I have done is to use the word sensor such that any text Wow Gold, wow gold, WowGold, wowgold is replaced by "Please report this post" to draw moderator or Admin attention to their rubbish posting.
I also do not allow urls in signatures until after 10 posts so they get nowhere on my site.

Jim

[jwxie]

A good idea Steve.
From what I have seen these Wow Gold spammers are human. If not then it would be the only bot to get through registration on my site in over 2 years. Assuming they are human then ok with your idea.
What I have done is to use the word sensor such that any text Wow Gold, wow gold, WowGold, wowgold is replaced by "Please report this post" to draw moderator or Admin attention to their rubbish posting.
I also do not allow urls in signatures until after 10 posts so they get nowhere on my site.

Jim

yeah
something that is verbal in your language will be a brilliant idea@@
yeah, at the same time, some softwares do have a config at acp to control how long will the new registration be able to post his first thread
if this is also added to phpbb will be a great use
since spammer will never waste their time if they have to wait for 1 hr after the new registration to post a thread.

[stevemaury]

As an addition to the word censor idea, edit the registration page:

Attention wowgold spammers: Your links are blocked at this site, so don't bother.

[MartectX]

Is it so bad with those wowgolders? I haven't seen one on the boards I frequent.

[Phil]

I've gotten about 20 or so on my rather small board, although that may be because it's linked to in my signature.

[Elias]

That would also affect how many users end up signing up that actually are interested in your forum's subject no?

Thanks,
EY

[Phil]

I'm not sure how it would effect them. I just delete the spammers.

[stevemaury]

That would also affect how many users end up signing up that actually are interested in your forum's subject no?

Thanks,
EY

Well, if they can't read the language the forum is in, they aren't going to sign up anyway, and if they can, the question will be easy.

[Jethan4u]

What is Wow Gold ?

[Phil]

World of Warcraft gold
Before anyone says I have no life, I've got no time to play WoW because of phpbb.com

[ron101]

How do i do that then? do i have to turn something on or what is there?

[EsrarliKapi]

I use almost the same but with some slight differences. In my forum, I don't want to use admin activation, I found it annoying as a user. I added a custom field myself. So I did this:

../ucp.php

Find:

Code: Select all

			// Replace "error" strings with their real, localised form

Replace:

Code: Select all

			$checker_answers = array('testanswer', 'answerno2', 'another');
			if(!in_array(strtr(strtolower($data['checker']), array(' ' => '')), $checker_answers))
			{
				$error[] = $user->lang['CHECKER_ERROR'];
			}

			// Replace "error" strings with their real, localised form

Find:

Code: Select all

			'tz'				=> request_var('tz', (float) $timezone),

Replace:

Code: Select all

			'tz'				=> request_var('tz', (float) $timezone),
			'checker'				=> request_var('checker', '', true),

../styles/prosilver/template/ucp_register.html

Find:

Code: Select all

		<dd><input type="password" tabindex="5" name="password_confirm" id="password_confirm" size="25" value="{PASSWORD_CONFIRM}" class="inputbox autowidth" title="{L_CONFIRM_PASSWORD}" /></dd>
	</dl>

Replace:

Code: Select all

		<dd><input type="password" tabindex="5" name="password_confirm" id="password_confirm" size="25" value="{PASSWORD_CONFIRM}" class="inputbox autowidth" title="{L_CONFIRM_PASSWORD}" /></dd>
	</dl>
	<dl>
		<dt><label for="checker">{L_CHECKER}:</label><br /><span>{L_CHECKER_EXPLAIN}</span></dt>
		<dd><input type="text" tabindex="6" name="checker" id="checker" size="25" maxlength="100" value="" class="inputbox autowidth" title="{L_CHECKER}" /></dd>
	</dl>

../language/en/ucp.php

Find:

Code: Select all

	'CONFIRM_PASSWORD_EXPLAIN'	=> 'You only need to confirm your password if you changed it above.',

Replace:

Code: Select all

	'CONFIRM_PASSWORD_EXPLAIN'	=> 'You only need to confirm your password if you changed it above.',
	'CHECKER'			=> 'What is my name?',
	'CHECKER_EXPLAIN'			=> 'Just to make sure you are human.',
	'CHECKER_ERROR'			=> 'Invalid check code, try again.',

Fill the $checker_answers array with the possible answers of the question.
The answer sent is automatically converted to lower case and space chars are removed, so make sure you set the answer like that too.
Change the 'CHECKER' language string as your question.

Doing well so far for me. Hope it helps somebody else. But make sure that the answers are guessable by your human users.

[igorw]

I'm working on a KittenAuth implementation.

[MartectX]

@EsrarliKapi: Ah, this mod existed for phpBB2, known as "The Humanizer". You know, you should make a ModX out of it; if you don't have the time I'd even do it for you (giving you credit of course).