Captcha is likely failing

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Captcha is likely failing

mark
There seem to be some spambots that are getting through the Nabble captcha (about one every week or so).

I just thought I'd send you a note on this. It might be a good idea to revamp it or something.
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Re: Captcha is likely failing

GregChapman
I have seen nothing on my forums.

Can you provide more information that might help identify why you are the target or the method/techniques or type of spam you are suffering.
Volunteer Helper - but recommending that users move off the platform!
Once the admin for GregHelp now deleted.
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Re: Captcha is likely failing

mark
This post was updated on .
It's probably because lots of spambots frequent my website (hymnwiki.org) and my forum is linked from my website. It's the same sort of spam I used to get there, before I made it so only approved users could edit (only a whole lot less of it). I'm pretty sure they're bots and not regular people being spammers. They don't act very human. I banned the users and deleted the posts. On my website, they create a bunch of accounts every day whether or not they can post (banning IP addresses didn't help a whit). I didn't have a captcha on my website, though. I was surprised to see they got past the Nabble one.

Anyway, they usually only make one post per username, whether or not I ban them. So, banning doesn't really do a lot of good. Some of the usernames lately have had the word 'Pharm' in them, followed by numbers. They usually repeat themselves, saying such as "Nice site" and giving a spam link. They leave off-topic posts with a quarter-hearted effort at almost being on-topic.

Anyway, I'm not complaining about the spam. I just thought you might like to know that the captcha doesn't seem to be 100% effective.

Maybe the spammers got new technology. They never left any spam on my forum until kind of recently (within the last six months or so).
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Re: Captcha is likely failing

mark
You could always ask questions that computers wouldn't immediately know the answers to (but humans would), kind of like some programming site accounts. I think python.org does that on their wiki. A longer captcha might work, too.
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Re: Captcha is likely failing

mark
In reply to this post by GregChapman
They just posted another one. Here's a link to it: http://hymnwiki.30302.n2.nabble.com/I-d-like-to-contribute-Lilypond-source-pdfs-of-recent-LDS-hymnbooks-td4989774.html#a7559305

They seem to be coming about every day now for the past two or three days.