that what we are here for...

i would like to say thank you to

just another job in the day and the life of a mod . its no prob, takes seconds to sort.

i can only agree with gav.. u guys did a really great job.. proud of u ..

myself havent been much online the last few weeks.. had to do alot for work.. and i mean alot.. 5 presentations so far.. and a 6th for the 22nd this month :S.. if i was online i was playin a bit of silkroad.. just go ingame and make a stall.. so ppl buy ur items.. and i can go work on my presentation again ... sometimes a game of cs:s for a few minutes.. or a quick l4d session.. i hope i get more time till the end of this month.. or the end of march... :S


anyways...

nice job guys.. keep things rollin' when im not here

As the other guys said!!!!!

thanks and please keep up the good work- cos if you dont we is gonna drown in bots!!!!

Thanks guys, your efforts are appreciated

Thanks guys, currently looking into how we can reduce the bots, already banned lots of ip addresses and email addresses!

Last lot of bots all seem to come from the same place,.............
Have banned their email address now though so should be ok with that one!

Neo, next bots that come on, if they have a "specific" email address add it to the ban email list!

adm/index.php?i=ban&mode=email

Also ban the IP address:

adm/index.php?i=ban&mode=ip

SK

if im on steam and any bots post, give me a buzz and i will remove it.

Jay

Banning IPs may be counterproductive. IPs are Dynamic when issued by ISPs to the General Public, meaning they can change at the end of their licence which is normally 14 days. The worse that could happen is that you ban a proxy by IP that disguises its IP as a UBR's address, then you will be banning potentially hundreds of thousands of people (even 10s of MILLIONS if International hub), including bona-fide members.

I'll look about for a plugin, if it exists, that will review blacklists of your choice, and compare new registrations against it.

Meanwhile SK, you should really check with a blacklist to make sure you're not shooting yourself in the foot. Just load up the following page:

http://www.robtex.com/ip/209.85.50.68.html

Replace the IP with the IP of the Spammer IP (theres a text box at the top to do so). Once loaded check with the Blacklist Page. If Blacklisted (most you check this way will be be at least one source) it will be shown in red, with the details of the Blacklist it is held on, and what it is blacklisted for.

As for preventing registrations, do a screen print of the registration screen. Remove the text from the screen. Replace with the image (this will prevent bots from scanning text which is how they know what to complete when registering). The Registration fields should then be anonymised (ie when asking for surname in text, the textfield normally is named txtSURNAME (vb versions) or similar which is obvious to a bot - so change the field name to txt000001 for example so bots cannot read). Also randomise the position of the fields, making sure though that they are correctly linked to the database. Dream and Spem are more than capable of doing this, so pass to them if you have issue.

Using this method, I have had NO bots (hundreds have tried) on my sites for the past 15 months

Ban the entire Asian subnet and you're spam free. You don't need Asians on here anyways, since their ping on yer servers would be huge, and 99% of spammers come from there. Lot less hassle then to recode the regpage, which most advanced bots will recognise anyways, by trial and error.