End of guest posting (or: To the Hells with you, spambots!)

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Jonas
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End of guest posting (or: To the Hells with you, spambots!)

Post by Jonas »

I'm getting a wee bit tired of those goddamn adbots spamming our forums, I've removed 4 advertisements for various stupid crap these past two weeks, and Trestkon did some creative editing on another one, as you can see elsewhere on this board.

So now I've disabled guest posting. I apologize for any inconvenience that would create for any regular fans, but we encourage you to create an account if you wish to post on this board. If you have problems registering, please send an email to tnm at offtopicproductions dot com and tell us your account name, and we'll activate it for you.
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Post by Dragon »

oh yeah... my forum got tagged by them too, but an account-spam bot. for god sake there exists ip and mail banning. 8)
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Post by justanotherfan »

But they were fun! Endless discussions of toothpicks.

I never read stickies.
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Post by Master_Kale »

justanotherfan wrote:But they were fun! Endless discussions of toothpicks.

I never read stickies.
You should SO be banned for reviving this amazingly dead thread :P
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Post by Dae »

If you guys need a protection against spam bot registration in phpBB let me know - i'll post the code. It was written by Russian programmer, just a replacement of one file.
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Post by Trestkon »

Dae wrote:If you guys need a protection against spam bot registration in phpBB let me know - i'll post the code. It was written by Russian programmer, just a replacement of one file.
Yes please!
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Post by Dae »

Spammers have managed to make a special recognition system, which recognises symbols from CAPTCHA or whatever it's called. CAPTCHA is a visual confirmation image.

Here you can download a mod I was talking about. It improves CAPTCHA, makes it a lot more difficult for program recognition, but a human can understand it as good as the default one.

See the difference:

Default phpBB one:
Image

Enhanced one:
Image

The mod works on most of hosts but not on all. That's why before installation you need to backup usercp_confirm.php file from includes/ folder.
After backuping, extract files from the archive to your includes/ folder, with overwriting usercp_confirm.php.
When it's done, log out and check if a visual confirmation image works and shows up on registering page.

Hope it helps.
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Post by Trestkon »

Works perfectly, Dae! Thanks a lot :D
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Post by Moonbo »

*A funeral ode to toothpicks* :-({|= \:D/
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Post by warman »

Hey do you mind if I forward a link of this to the admin at a forum I am a regular at that has a major problem with Spam bots?
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Post by Dae »

warman wrote:Hey do you mind if I forward a link of this to the admin at a forum I am a regular at that has a major problem with Spam bots?
Why you ask? Of course. Less spam, the better the world is :P
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Post by Trestkon »

Some people are still having troubles with not receiving their activation emails. I'm going to try shutting off user activation for now and see if the fancy new code Dae linked us to is enough to hold off the spambots.
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Re: End of guest posting (or: To the Hells with you, spambots!)

Post by Jonas »

I'm degrading this to a normal post because all announcements appear in every forum now, and it's taking up unnecessary space :)
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Re:

Post by Placebo »

Master_Kale wrote:
justanotherfan wrote:But they were fun! Endless discussions of toothpicks.

I never read stickies.
You should SO be banned for reviving this amazingly dead thread :P
Image
ImageEvery morning, I meditate about love and peace... I stop after three seconds.
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Re: End of guest posting (or: To the Hells with you, spambots!)

Post by Mr_Cyberpunk »

ROFL 2 years ago.. man that was ages.
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