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OffTopic > Antispambot plugin vBulletin.

#152180 - sgeos - Tue Mar 11, 2008 7:22 am

The gbadev forum uses a few simple questions to defeat spambot registration. Does anyone know of a simple plugin for vBulletin that does the same?

"What is the Earth? A) a planet, B) a square, C) maybe, D) all of the above"
"What the GBA? A) bean dip, B) yes, C) a game system, D) all of the above"
"What is 2 + 2? A) no, B) a search engine, C) 4, D) all of the above"

Failing that, does anyone know of any anti-spambot plugins for vBulletin?

-Brendan

#152181 - Dwedit - Tue Mar 11, 2008 9:04 am

I've found that the "fake form" method works surprisingly well.

Make sure the fake forms come first in the HTML code outputted, and keep the names of the fields the same. Then hide the fake fields with CSS. Then put real fields below the fake ones. Reject any post containing content inside the fake form.

Modify the server-side code to use different names for the form fields than before. By having the fake fields use names of real fields, that may stop the bots.
I stopped getting spam on my message board after I added in fake forms, combined with rejecting URLS in guest posts and a newly registered user's first post. Rejecting URLs may go a long way, but it doesn't stop the bots who throw stock ticker symbols around.
_________________
"We are merely sprites that dance at the beck and call of our button pressing overlord."

#152268 - sgeos - Thu Mar 13, 2008 1:54 am

Thank you much.