Can something be done about our guest spammer?

[berelinde]

Looks like a bot. Annoying to think something new is there, because many people do post as just Guest.

[cmorgan]

Domi and I are both trying - will advise!

[Miloch]

I suggested Cam install an image recognition mod on the forum for anyone who wants to post as a guest. I'm pretty sure there is one for Invision (the software behind this board) and a whole host of other anti-bot mods as well probably. The current anti-spam filter only scans for certain words in posts, which isn't really all that effective to block bots.

[CamDawg]

When I get around to upgrading the board software, guest posting will require captchas. That being said, they won't be effective--captchas aren't stopping bots from registering and they won't be stopping them posting either. There are several anti-spam measures in place; the word filter is the only one most folks know about as it's the only one that can affect legit posters.

 

To give a sense of scale, the anti-spam measures blocked about 1700 spam attempts in December and only 29 actually reached the point where they had to be manually deleted by a moderator. This bot got through because I wasn't around for most of December.