Registering on the Inside3D Forums

[FrikaC]

EDIT: Things changed, see new post

Due to a recent rash of automated posters, the Inside3D forums now use a method of authentication called KittenAuth. In this Captcha scheme you will be presented with a grid of images and a question related to these images. The strength of the system is in the customization and is best handled if each installed message board has a seperate set of questions and images. The Inside3D forums use images from the id software game Quake. The questions ask for you to identify which pictures are monsters, keys, powerups, weapons or armors.

If you've been living under a rock your entire life and you are completely unfamiliar with Quake or are otherwise having trouble registering, You can download the shareware version of the game, located here http://www.quakeone.com/freequake/en.html to familiarize yourself. If you are visually impaired you may register by contacting me at frikac@inside3d.com. Please use the word Inside3D in the subject line to bypass my spam filter.

Thank you for your interest in Inside3D.

[RenegadeC]

You're welcome!

[Jukki]

Seems to work fine

Sory i had to

[Ace12GA]

Hehe, truly is sort of funny.

[ceriux]

actually... i hopped on today hoping to find something interesting to read and this bot has ruined a small part of my day -.- they seem to be getting worse..

[Jukki]

This is one reason why we realy need some knd of internet id for everyone...

But in otherside that would suck

[frag.machine]

This is one reason why we realy need some knd of internet id for everyone...

But in otherside that would suck

Huh... Nope. Not really.

[revelator]

minor inconvienience maybe but its a hell of a lot more inconvinient to wade through a ton of spam to get to the post you want to watch

[frag.machine]

An "internet ID" (that surely won't be free) can't solve the spam problem; it will only create another - a whole black market of stolen "internet ID's".

Regarding our immediate problem, I think it's better to disable new users automatically signing up. Any new applicant would be required to send an e-mail request to an admin to be admitted. I know, sounds very antipathetic, but our community is small enough to this to work. I would even voluntary to make the check for human non spammers candidates if the admins think it's too much of a burden.

[r00k]

Back in the day, on BBSs the sysop would call you back and get voice confirmation

[frag.machine]

Back in the day, on BBSs the sysop would call you back and get voice confirmation

Those were the days... LOL

But some Quake-related captcha would work well enough too I suppose.

[toneddu2000]

It doesn't seem to work well. Tonight at 10:13 PM(Italy,gmt +1) the site is invaded by spam on all recent threads
I think if it wouldn't be better, because there aren't plenty of users registering every day, to block new users and send an authorization mail to administrator, who could send an invitation mail to the user. Granting if he/she's a real human (he/she should reply to the administrator with a simple introduction mail), the administrator would unblock the user and everything would be fine! I know it seems a mess but I don't think it would be happen every second, we are a small community after all!

[Ace12GA]

An "internet ID" (that surely won't be free) can't solve the spam problem; it will only create another - a whole black market of stolen "internet ID's".

Regarding our immediate problem, I think it's better to disable new users automatically signing up. Any new applicant would be required to send an e-mail request to an admin to be admitted. I know, sounds very antipathetic, but our community is small enough to this to work. I would even voluntary to make the check for human non spammers candidates if the admins think it's too much of a burden.

This is the solution, even if it does mean a little more work. It was the only way I could keep spam off my boards. Its a shame, because it can deter a new valid user pretty easily, but it does mean spammer don't generally get in.

I toyed with a sticky thread in the general and news section of my boards that had a contact address. The idea was, if you registered, send an email to that contact address with the user name you registered as. Then I would activate the accounts of people that actually read the posts on registering. It stopped one or two valid users I suspect, but it also stopped the spammers dead. I would check the mail box, validate new users and activate their accounts, then run a script on the board database that removed all accounts that had not been activated. The SQL query was something like this:

Code: Select all

DELETE FROM `phpbb_users` WHERE `user_active`='0' AND `username`!='anonymous';


That was for PHPBB2 mind you.

[Jukki]

Just disable register for now New users are mostly psp-kiddos anyways

BTW, if you are using reCaptcha, I read somewhere that it is not safe to use (was cracked or something)

[ratbert]

Looks like still spammers around. New one "Yopemrlde" is posted a ton of crap.