Spam attacks our forum

[Jorgebon]

Jordan,
Is there anything that can be done to get rid of all the spam that sprung up today on this forum?
Jorge Bonilla, DMD

[wjstarck]

Since these spams are typically done by autobots anyways, the normal way is to add on a captcha or simple math question as a prerequisite to signing up for an account or posting to foil the autobots. There are plenty of those available for phpBB.

For this forum, it'd be fun if Jordan added a series of dental related questions as a prerequisite for posting, 'cause not only would that foil the autobots, but it make it just hard enough for human spammers that it probably wouldn't be worth their while.

eg. (correct answer in parenthesis)

- Tooth #7 is a lateral ____________ (incisor)
- Lidocaine is a _________ anesthestic (local)
- The dental term for gums is _________ (gingiva)
- The root of a tooth is composed of __________ (cementum)
- The dental term for cavities is __________ (caries)

Well, you get the idea...

[jmiller]

HEY ... no fair! I am here because I support OD, but I know nothing about teeth!

You dentists with all your technical jargon are so confusing

[jordansparks]

Grrr.

[Rickliftig]

Jordan -

I'm curious, how did the bums get access? Was it a zombie attack? Was one of our computers infected?

[jordansparks]

We require valid email addresses to authenticate users. They had actual functional email addresses that responded to our initial email. They also use OCR to get through our captcha. It's ok. We have plenty of ways to beef up the security. A real person will always be able to get through, but what we're fighting is robots.

[jordansparks]

The spammers just posted few porn shots, so I had to disable images for now. The forum may be down periodically throughout the day while we tighten security.

[jordansparks]

It's been 4 days since we finished upgrading the security, and the bot activity has completely died, even the stuff that you all can't see but which drives us crazy. I think we're in the clear now, so I'm turning images back on.