Bots crawling on web forums.

[dk_sn1p3r]

How do you keep advertising bots from automatically activating accounts and posting spam on your forums? One of the gaming forums I'm on is having issues with bots on the forums.  We are using PHPBB and a word-image verification at account creation.  Even with those mechanisms we are still having issues.  Do you have any suggestions?

EDIT: I just had a conversation with R1CH Man this guy is awesome!  Apparently PHPBB is fairly horrible with security at mind.  It might look attractive but the code holding it together is poor.   If your going to use PHPBB stay up to date and use a very nice 3rd party word-image verification add-in!  Rich said a better solution would be smf!

Thanks again Rich you rule!

[shovel]

dk_sn1p3r, this worked real well for our forums. No more forum bots!!!
It adds a math question and bots get stumped.

http://4fxearth.net/applications/Math%20Question%20During%20Registration.txt

here is what it looks like in the registration form....

http://q2madhouse.com/phpBB/profile.php?mode=register&agreed=true

[R1CH]

The answer and form name are hard coded, it will be trivial for a spambot update to bypass.

[shovel]

The answer and form name are hard coded, it will be trivial for a spambot update to bypass.

oh ya, I am sure of that. We were getting about three spambot registrations a day even with the word image verification. But since I did this mod about a week ago we haven't had one register yet, and I removed the useless word image verification.

So for now until they bypass it, its nice not having to delete their accounts on a daily basis.