looking for a registration mod that will block human spammer

[walkerp]

This mod may already existed, but everything we've searched for has only turned up mods that ask questions that check against existing answers. We are a small enough community that an admin can handle each request. So what I'm looking for is a mod that asks a first-time register a human question and then sends the contents of the answer field to the admin, who will then read it and decide whether or not to approve the applicant.

We are finding that more and more of our spam registrants are actually real people, so they are able to answer questions with hard-coded answers like "Who is Luke Skywalker's father".

Does such a mod exist? Thanks!

[KevC]

The problem with that type of question is that it can be googled to get the answer, which is how the bots get in.

You need to ask something that can't be, such as asking them to enter the first name of Luke Skywalker or the first 3 letters of his surname. Something like that.

There is a double activation MOD that might do what you want (I haven't read the full list of features)
http://www.phpbb.com/customise/db/mod/a ... ation_pack

[walkerp]

But humans can still answer those kinds of questions. We are getting spammers that appear to be people hired in eastern Europe or China who just go from forum to forum, sign up, post something that is vaguely relevant to the topic at hand with links to pharmaceuticals and other sales websites in their sigs. Are others not seeing this?

I'll follow up on that link you posted. Thanks!

[KevC]

Human spammers sign up just like genuine members do.

Paid spammers are actually quite rare.

I have a good Q&A question and admin account activation. I just do a quick whois on the registration IP. If it's from any of the usual suspects like China or Russia I just don't activate the account.

You could also utilise the newly registered users group by setting the registration new member post limit to 1.
That means the first post of every member has to be approved before they can post freely (we do that on here). Spammers give themselves away in the first post they make.

[durangod]

i dont remember the site but i found it thru google awhile back, if gives a listing of all counties ip addresses so you can block them thru your htaccess to block ip's from those countries. The down side is that they can use ip mirrors to get around that, but it does block the novices who do not use mirrors so that might help you some.

[Oyabun1]

Maybe this will be a solution, Activation Justification.