D7.1 Simple Spam Bot Stopper

This is a simple idea that has stopped the spam bots from spamming my site daily. It's an idea that has been around for a while, but there are enough new users here so I will post it. It adds a logical question and retains the reCaptcha feature for added security.

1) Go to Admin --> Builders --> Profile Fields  and drag a NEW_ITEM block up and put it just before the Captcha block.

2) Click on the block and add:

3) System Name  --> HumanCheck

4) Caption --> What is 4+5?

5) Description --> To complete the join form, you must prove your human and not a spam bot.

6) Select "Text" from drop down at the bottom,

7) Then click on Advanced tab on top,

8) Check "Mandatory"

9) Set min value to 1 and max value to 9

10) In the "Check" field put this: return strtolower($arg0) == '9';

Save.

Thanks for this

cool thank you....

hey for some reason i changed templates and now i cant seem to find how to turn of invitation only for when people want to join    it just dissapered  any suggestions

Admin >> Settings >> Advanced Settings >> Profiles >> "Enable registration by invitation only:"

cool! very useful!!! thanx!

i cant edit own blocks... why???

i can put new block, but i cant save it and i cant delete it... nothing, browsers chrome and firefox... same. Explorer is so shit that there dont work anything 

I don't use the captcha. I got way too many spam bots. I have used another human verification method for Dolphin 7.0.9 with complete success in preventing bots from joining. I learned it from a programer on the DevelopPhp web site.  In the join form create a field that has a max value of 0 (zero).  Then set the defaullt value as "Delete this text"  Your caption can also instruct the user to delete the text in the box.  For some reason bots will not complete this correctly.  You will also want a Maximum exceed error message like "You did not delete the text in this box."

I have not yet tried splitting the form into two or more pages.

Love the screen shots. They make it pretty clear. My method is similar to above, but I just move the captcha block to inactive.  I hate trying to figure out what they are and so do my users.

This is known as a turing test.  I have used this on my standalone blog with great success and was interested in implementing it on Dolphin.  I hate Captcha.  Captcha has been broken; and it has been broken for some time now, so it is possible for bots to get by it.  I get messages from people trying to join telling me they can not get by the #$%!* image thing and why am I making the images so hard to read; they have to be impossible to read in order to be effective.

It would be nice to have a turing test built in where you could enter several questions that are randomly selected but this is fine as well, just go in and change the question/answer set at times.

Thanks for posting the tutorial on implementing a turing test on Dolphin.

This and many other ideas have already been discussed at length in a post

http://www.boonex.com/forums/topic/spam-spam-spam-spam-IDEA-.htm

I found the human test to be sufficient in keeping out all but the most ardent spammer.

 tonymarek

Nice tutorial for those who haven't done this already.

I have done this a few month ago. No spammers since then....

 Yes, it is still working well for me. I have had one human spammer and one bot in the past 5 months. Before that, I was getting 20+ bots daily.

This is a big help.  Now I can turn the auto-activation of blogs back on.  I wouldn't mind these bots if they were posting relevant content in my blogs lol

nice one ... +1

A JavaScripted check box works wonders because java is client side so the checkbox is only rendered in the browser. Spambots can't even see it. Just needs a label like "I am a human".

edit by danielmarseille

write in the language of the forum, thank you

 how i can implement this for mutiple language?

Money saving with this free mod, thanks! 

If i should have known about it before buying the $40 DLS one at the market; too late now.

 anyone?

 Phan

 Not sure what your asking here.

the above is to check to see if the new member is putting in the answer which is 9.

You have to ask the answer.. in your language, 

e.g. "3 veces 3 es igual a qué?"  9

Now for multiple languages, I suggest your implementing the google translate button to your site, there is no way to do this unless you have all the language packs your wanting on site.

http://www.boonex.com/forums/topic/Translate-your-dolphin-site-into-52-languages-easy.htm

 Yes but I don't use google transl I have Spanish and English where I create or how I create the key for the question. and take that field to a next level I mean for multi-language

this has suddenly stopped having any effect now as back getting 30+ spambots a day, even though this is still displayed on the sign up form

This is easy and no Spam Bots Ever. In the Builders/Profile Fields/Join Form  Fields builder Create a new field that has the settings shown in the scheen shots attached to this post

 i just put a question like this: The apple is a fruit or Vegetal?

and i not received 1 bot more.

 I've heard about this before and it sounds like a great idea. Will try it.

It works!

I've been using the question deal for a couple months now and haven't have any bots register. and is free, don't have to pay for expensive spam stoper mods, just create the question like the instructions here say.

Hello everyone

Please help me it is not working for my site please help http://guitarelements.com is my site

Ive noticed something odd in one site, not sure if some file permission may be wrong to allow this...

I have set to 'invitation only', put captcha, human test, email confirmation etc... and still I get countless spam accounts joining daily!!! They cant do anything as the site is set to emails have to be confirmed.

However, they are still able to bypass the entire join checks and insert themselves as members!

Maybe some direct injection to database? 

Not seen this before on any dolphin site, just one that Ive had on the shelf for some time and returned to.

Hi

I use SMTP Mailer instead of the default PHP Mailer.

It is set for "authentication"

The new sign up must verify email on sign up

Also generate random password instead of letting the sign-up choosing a password

I use this on all Joomla and Wordpress sites and it works for Dolphin too.

 this worked for a while but spammers are back!

Has anyone else tried Incapsula?

Whenever I've mentioned it on other posts I feel like I'm talking to a mirror.

It's a free proxy that removes all bots, spam and human bots, and has black and white lists for good measure.

Recaptcha is not needed.

No bots even reach your site, which can account for 80% of all traffic.

It has additional techniques for speeding up your site.

You don't need robots.txt. You can nominate which web crawlers you want to allow access to your site. You cannot do this with robots.txt

It's free. No, this is not a paid advertisement. 

There's a paid version which prevents DDOS attacks and more.

Cheers,

Rod

Incapsula features look interesting... though I'm not sure whether I'd pay for their services... at least not until I had a busy site that could afford it and needed it.  How do (did?) you like using their "free plan"... any compelling reason to use it?  

-- Paul

For me, this is compelling enough to use the free version:

The free version:

Thank you sir for this security suggest and I did exactly the procedure save for the question. I changed it to "How much is 3x2?". However, when I tried to JOIN a new user the form says there's an error but my answer is correct: 6

Can you check where did I go wrong please? Thanks sirs.

i just installed this and it worked for my site.

great add and hoping to stop spam

iff2in

For the past several months since upgrading to D7.2.1, each of my sites had been consistently getting 5-10 spam signups per day. They even confirm via email too. So manually deleting them had become a pain in the ass. (Yes, I use Captcha plus I require fields like Country, State/Province, City, Birthday, M/F, and 1 custom question based on my niche ).

After reading this thread last week, I added a field to my join form: RUHUMAN.

I started with the question: What is 4 plus 5?

Spam continued unabated.

I changed the question to: What is 5 minus 2?

Spam continued unabated.

I then changed the question to: Is an apple a fruit or a vegetable?
(thank you phan for that idea!)

No spam signups since. Not even one.

Hope this can help others.

Nice one. Thanks for this.