How long does it take to add a CAPTCHA to account creation?

Mr_Punkster - Dreamweaver · September 2012

Annalyse - Heavens Tear wrote: »

Agreed with this.

If they add one to account creation only, I'd have no problem with that (and I think it is a good idea). But adding one to forum login/submitting posts would make things really annoying and possibly deter a lot of people from using the forums.

If they got a decent one easy enough to read on login, I doubt it'd deter most people. You log into the site not the forums, which you must do to get the blessing as well. I doubt the spammers are using a bot to create their accounts, yet only to log in and spam.

Annalyse - Heavens Tear · September 2012

Mr_Punkster - Dreamweaver wrote: »

If they got a decent one easy enough to read on login, I doubt it'd deter most people. You log into the site not the forums, which you must do to get the blessing as well. I doubt the spammers are using a bot to create their accounts, yet only to log in and spam.

I suppose so, but I personally have yet to see one that I found easy to read. Thus I am not in favor of one I would have to use several times a day.

Asterelle - Sanctuary_1381265973 · September 2012

We already have a captcha for login. You see it if you fail to enter your password correctly twice in a row.
There is no reason to have a captcha for first login since passwords aren't being stolen by bots.

What we need is a captcha for account creation so bots can't make spam accounts.

VenusArmani - Dreamweaver · September 2012

Asterelle - Sanctuary wrote: »

We already have a captcha for login. You see it if you fail to enter your password correctly twice in a row.
There is no reason to have a captcha for first login since passwords aren't being stolen by bots.

What we need is a captcha for account creation so bots can't make spam accounts.

Except that some passwords are being phished from accounts to use in bots, according to Shelly's thread. The bot links are phishing passwords to create more bots. Wouldn't be surprise if they stole in-game items too but IDK on that one.

chaoticshelly · September 2012

Most of the accounts, according to what I've been told - are in fact newly created accounts solely for that purpose. They lead to phishing websites, so as mentioned earlier, don't be tempted to click on any links posted by spam bots.

Annalyse - Heavens Tear · September 2012

Seven pages of spam. b:shocked I honestly can't be bothered to stay on the forums and weed through to find the legitimate posts when it gets this bad.

Put in a freaking captcha already.

Xx_BeLLa_xX - Harshlands · September 2012

I though of something to fight the spam, i don't know if it's something possible i'm not a pro of computer forum stuff, but i guess it could be done.

People spamming forum actually use the avatar of the face in rock cause they don't have chars in game.

If the GMs (or persons that can do it) delete the choice of the face in rock, people will need to choose a avatar of their existing char in game, which will make the spammers unable to post unless they create a char in game (which mean download the game, create a toon, too much work just to spam).

Anyway someone that don't have chars in game have no reason to post on the forum. So the only people that will be able to post would be the people really playing the game.

crystalpink · September 2012

Sounds like a good idea to me. ^^

However, I'm not sure if this will be effective enough since it's not that hard for them to download the client and then make tons of accounts to spam here.
Even worse, they might start spamming in game, too +___+;;;

/off-topic
My face-in-rock avatar is already gone forever b:chuckle
/end of off-topic

_Skai_ - Raging Tide · September 2012

What crystal said. This means that each character the spammer account makes can be used to spam again.

The best solution is just to have the user enter a captcha when they create an account, and when making a new topic.

Xx_BeLLa_xX - Harshlands · September 2012

I doubt the spammer play the game, they prolly just create a account and spam.

amingwati · September 2012

I'm using that face in rock avatar.. b:sad

Fate/Soul - Lost City · September 2012

A better idea would be to not allow posting on forums until at least lvl 5.b:bye

Xx_BeLLa_xX - Harshlands · September 2012

Fate/Soul - Lost City wrote: »

A better idea would be to not allow posting on forums until at least lvl 5.b:bye

If someone lvl 4 need help or info about something?

Fate/Soul - Lost City · September 2012

Xx_BeLLa_xX - Harshlands wrote: »

If someone lvl 4 need help or info about something?

Honestly if you haven't logged on the game and gotten to at least level 5...

amingwati · September 2012

Fate/Soul - Lost City wrote: »

A better idea would be to not allow posting on forums until at least lvl 5.b:bye

hey, nice idea! I agree with this :>

Xx_BeLLa_xX - Harshlands wrote: »

If someone lvl 4 need help or info about something?

Then make it like this, minimum level 5 to create new thread. But to post on other ppl thread lvl 1 is enough. Then make a stickied Help Thread for Newbie where all newbie can make a post to ask for help with anything they need instead of making a thread..

Xx_BeLLa_xX - Harshlands · September 2012

amingwati wrote: »

Then make it like this, minimum level 5 to create new thread. But to post on other ppl thread lvl 1 is enough. Then make a stickied Help Thread for Newbie where all newbie can make a post to ask for help with anything they need instead of making a thread..

Yea that could work a lvl 1 can post but not create a thread and lvl5+ can, but i don't know if they could do that that must be complicated for them to change all of that.

VenusArmani - Dreamweaver · September 2012

There is already a beginner's section of the forum, it's one of the least active sections of the forums. Newbies generally don't know how to do anything, and the ones that want to be proactive are generally the ones that ask for help picking classes and builds later on. I think not being able to post a thread about what to expect from the game until after you downloaded it is a bit much. I'd much rather have the number of new threads/posts for anyone under a certain post count or level to be limited to a reasonable amount for newbies to ask questions. Chances are they only have a couple anyway.

Magnanimous_ - Heavens Tear · September 2012

or a captcha?

truekossy · September 2012

They could simply do a somewhat manual forum validation where your first post must be in a specific forum. Bots would be easily weeded out by their posts since it'd be relatively rare for them to have "normal" posts and thus, no validation to begin with. Plus, since making initial posts in that forum, which would be hidden from validated users, means the spam gets contained and doesn't get to affect anywhere else so the rest of the forums stay clean. Besides, since it'd only apply to posting, people who aren't validated yet could still browse... and maybe learn to use the search button in the process.

... or a captcha for those below a certain post count AND below a certain age. That way spamming to bypass it will be discouraged and you can't just steal an old account or alt with no posts.

Anyways, as a default avatar... I kinda don't want to be deleted. b:sad

frankieraye · September 2012

Thank you all for suggesting ideas to help fight spam; removing it from the forums is a top priority for us.

While I will not go into depth about what methods we are currently using and planning on using in the near future, I will talk about a few of the suggestions that you guys brought up here.

1. User registration CAPTCHA

This could theoretically work, however, it would be a very broad stroke to solve the problem. We're trying to come up with a solution that would not have such a large effect on the entire legitimate player population. The idea of forcing every single potential user to complete a CAPTCHA is not acceptable to us -- a lot of actual people have trouble with CAPTCHAs and, as others have pointed out, CAPTCHAs aren't 100% bot-proof anyway.

2. Thread creation CAPTCHA

This would be great, I completely agree. However, with our version of vBulletin, the only CAPTCHA that can be used is one that works solely for "Guest" users. The option allows us to force Guests to complete a CAPTCHA every time they post. Unfortunately, this is useless to us because we don't allow Guest users to post in the first place -- only Registered Users can post, and that's the usergroup that the spambots are in.

We will actually be upgrading our version of vBulletin soon, which is something we'll all need to talk about in the next couple weeks for other reasons as well. The new version will have new spam-fighting capabilities, which should be great.

3. Level requirement for posting on forums

This was actually a suggestion that was kicked around over here as well. It would 100% be able to stop spambots, however, the problem with it is that it would disable certain legitimate people from posting such as:

a) Users with tech support issues like being unable to download/install the game, graphical issues, login issues etc..

b) Curious people who are just looking for info about the game before they decide to try it out.

We definitely don't want to leave these kinds of users out in the cold.

So again, thank you for the suggestions, and please know that we're taking this issue seriously. We've already implemented a couple of short-term measures, and we'll be adding to them soon with more long-term solutions.

Mr_Punkster - Dreamweaver · September 2012

frankieraye wrote: »

Thank you all for suggesting ideas to help fight spam; removing it from the forums is a top priority for us.

While I will not go into depth about what methods we are currently using and planning on using in the near future, I will talk about a few of the suggestions that you guys brought up here.

1. User registration CAPTCHA

This could theoretically work, however, it would be a very broad stroke to solve the problem. We're trying to come up with a solution that would not have such a large effect on the entire legitimate player population. The idea of forcing every single potential user to complete a CAPTCHA is not acceptable to us -- a lot of actual people have trouble with CAPTCHAs and, as others have pointed out, CAPTCHAs aren't 100% bot-proof anyway.

2. Thread creation CAPTCHA

This would be great, I completely agree. However, with our version of vBulletin, the only CAPTCHA that can be used is one that works solely for "Guest" users. The option allows us to force Guests to complete a CAPTCHA every time they post. Unfortunately, this is useless to us because we don't allow Guest users to post in the first place -- only Registered Users can post, and that's the usergroup that the spambots are in.

We will actually be upgrading our version of vBulletin soon, which is something we'll all need to talk about in the next couple weeks for other reasons as well. The new version will have new spam-fighting capabilities, which should be great.

3. Level requirement for posting on forums

This was actually a suggestion that was kicked around over here as well. It would 100% be able to stop spambots, however, the problem with it is that it would disable certain legitimate people from posting such as:

a) Users with tech support issues like being unable to download/install the game, graphical issues, login issues etc..

b) Curious people who are just looking for info about the game before they decide to try it out.

We definitely don't want to leave these kinds of users out in the cold.

So again, thank you for the suggestions, and please know that we're taking this issue seriously. We've already implemented a couple of short-term measures, and we'll be adding to them soon with more long-term solutions.

I recently created a new acc to see how easy it was. PWI doesn't even require you to check your email and click on a verification to activate your account? How about adding that too?

Lesthar - Heavens Tear · September 2012

Xx_BeLLa_xX - Harshlands wrote: »

I doubt the spammer play the game, they prolly just create a account and spam.

You know, even if they would, they'd do the minimum (and some scam attempts did happen that way. I am not wishing to explain which ones, since it could bring some ill-intentioned people to just do that).

By the way, to be slightly off-topic, I am just glad that teleacoustics are not so easy to come by. If in-game bots could spread messages in world chat without an item, imagine the subsequent damage.

So if you asked people to create a character in game to be able to participate in the forums, this not only would be unfair to the newcomers (Wait, what? newcomers still exist?? b:shocked) plus too many people would use the lazy ways to do it (default skins).

Oh by the way, I fully agree with the CAPTCHA suggestion... and I know there is a thread on it.

Xx_BeLLa_xX - Harshlands wrote: »

If the GMs (or persons that can do it) delete the choice of the face in rock, people will need to choose a avatar of their existing char in game, which will make the spammers unable to post unless they create a char in game (which mean download the game, create a toon, too much work just to spam).

The stone face avatar is a good thing to keep though. Not everyone wants to show a basic representation of in-game character, especially if it's a low-leveled one.

*Random rant warning*

Just on this, there are forum fools that judge you by much unpolitely calling you a 'noob', just because you give your point of view in their 'expert threads' (you know... r9, interval and other things of the same type)
All they do is look at the small number under your avatar and diss you if you are not lv 100 like them. Amusingly enough, levels don't prove anything anymore, especially when you are able to take shortcuts to such levels, be them legal or not (ironically, bragging about levels gotten from glitch abuse is really undeserving of praise).

I am glad I don't involve myself into these petty levels/equipment/wallet size/skill-related petty arguments, but it sure can be annoying to witness it.
b:surrender

Xx_BeLLa_xX - Harshlands · September 2012

Magnanimous_ - Heavens Tear wrote: »

or a captcha?

That have been suggested many times, that doesn't seems to interrest them, so i try a new idea.

Barber - Heavens Tear · September 2012

I dont know exactly how this form of message board works or if mods have the power to do it like on other boards but....

when i used to mod for GameShark, Datel and Action Repl, mods could delete topics, posts, and/or edit anything that was put in a topic or forum...plus they could also ban people according to either their name or even whole IP address...it worked great when we were being attacked by whole groups of people at one time ie: 20 or 30 people at once posting the nasty Goatsie or Tubgirl and Lemon Party pics....if you dont know what they are you are very lucky

anyway I dont know if its possible for a mod to have that much power on this type of message board considering it might be tied in with the game system too...the only problem we ever had was with AOHell accounts was where everyone shared the same IP Address so if you banned 1 person it also banned about 200 others along with it thats where we needed the single user ban system instead of the ip ban..i dont know if AOL still uses that type of connection like they used to that was four years ago that I worked with them and the coding

Mods also had the power to take the boards offline (so regular members could not see it but all the mods and admins could take care of things) so that we could clean up the forums from the **** and pic postings that came along with the others mentioned above...it was a great option to have to keep 300 little kids from seeing the nasty stuff that the idiots were posting 600 times a minute

plus Mods also had the power to ban and unban people with admins permission and we also had the power to edit peoples profiles to remove unusually large and disgustiing sigs and such that people that some disgruntled members like to put in there to show up in every post that they ever made

it also meant that mods could also give out forum titles like is done here but it gave the admins more time to work on coding and get their work done and not have to deal with trivial mundane tasks that that did nothing but take up time that amounted to just time consumers

Like I said earlier though the GS Forums had almost 400,000 members registered on it when i Moderated there and it was nothing to see 500 to 600 posts in one day on a slow day..these forums are pretty dead to have mods get that much power but again it would sure take a lot of work away from the admins so they could get the more important things done

We also had the personal phone numbers of the admins so in cases of extreme emergencies someone could be contacted at a moments notice

GS was a busy place with making game cheat codes until all the console companies decided to do away with letting us break their codes and only use game saves for "enhancements"

About the only thing i can think of to stop the spam right now is to simply have an email verification before you can post on the forums....most of these here are just bots that find a forum and start posting on it

okie thats my two dollars and fifty cents worth carry on

kawaiijen · September 2012

Since I don't think many people read the other thread about this. I'm just going to leave this here.

frankieraye wrote: »

Thank you all for suggesting ideas to help fight spam; removing it from the forums is a top priority for us.

While I will not go into depth about what methods we are currently using and planning on using in the near future, I will talk about a few of the suggestions that you guys brought up here.

1. User registration CAPTCHA

This could theoretically work, however, it would be a very broad stroke to solve the problem. We're trying to come up with a solution that would not have such a large effect on the entire legitimate player population. The idea of forcing every single potential user to complete a CAPTCHA is not acceptable to us -- a lot of actual people have trouble with CAPTCHAs and, as others have pointed out, CAPTCHAs aren't 100% bot-proof anyway.

2. Thread creation CAPTCHA

This would be great, I completely agree. However, with our version of vBulletin, the only CAPTCHA that can be used is one that works solely for "Guest" users. The option allows us to force Guests to complete a CAPTCHA every time they post. Unfortunately, this is useless to us because we don't allow Guest users to post in the first place -- only Registered Users can post, and that's the usergroup that the spambots are in.

We will actually be upgrading our version of vBulletin soon, which is something we'll all need to talk about in the next couple weeks for other reasons as well. The new version will have new spam-fighting capabilities, which should be great.

3. Level requirement for posting on forums

This was actually a suggestion that was kicked around over here as well. It would 100% be able to stop spambots, however, the problem with it is that it would disable certain legitimate people from posting such as:

a) Users with tech support issues like being unable to download/install the game, graphical issues, login issues etc..

b) Curious people who are just looking for info about the game before they decide to try it out.

We definitely don't want to leave these kinds of users out in the cold.

So again, thank you for the suggestions, and please know that we're taking this issue seriously. We've already implemented a couple of short-term measures, and we'll be adding to them soon with more long-term solutions.

frankieraye · September 2012

Mr_Punkster - Dreamweaver wrote: »

I recently created a new acc to see how easy it was. PWI doesn't even require you to check your email and click on a verification to activate your account? How about adding that too?

This is actually how registration used to be -- every new user had to verify his email address before his account was activated. The issue with this was that we had a lot of issues in the past where players never received the activation emails, and thus were unable to log in and play.

To take this into account while still keeping the some security in effect, we went ahead modified the way it worked so that only certain suspicious activity triggers the email verification requirement; for the most part, email verification is no longer required.

Xx_BeLLa_xX - Harshlands · September 2012

KawaiiJen wrote: »

Since I don't think many people read the other thread about this. I'm just going to leave this here.

Frankie post was made after my thread.

seitori · September 2012

frankieraye wrote: »

Thank you all for suggesting ideas to help fight spam; removing it from the forums is a top priority for us.

While I will not go into depth about what methods we are currently using and planning on using in the near future, I will talk about a few of the suggestions that you guys brought up here.

3. Level requirement for posting on forums

This was actually a suggestion that was kicked around over here as well. It would 100% be able to stop spambots, however, the problem with it is that it would disable certain legitimate people from posting such as:

a) Users with tech support issues like being unable to download/install the game, graphical issues, login issues etc..

b) Curious people who are just looking for info about the game before they decide to try it out.

We definitely don't want to leave these kinds of users out in the cold.

So again, thank you for the suggestions, and please know that we're taking this issue seriously. We've already implemented a couple of short-term measures, and we'll be adding to them soon with more long-term solutions.

Frankie, there was 1 other part to this highlighted part of your post, that you should also notify everyone on; on how this part could also be bypassed by just sneeky Phishers alone...

And that is that not every (spambot post) may come from brand new Users accounts; all they need to do too bypass it, would be too phish out & Highjack multiple actual (users/players) accounts and then set those accounts as the new host account for the Spambot's, until they too are located, closed down & locked up (until the original users of those accounts can reclaim their locked accounts)

Even though that would still only be a (Very small/minor & short lived) problem compared too these hordes of new drone accounts which seem too keep breeding up on the registry part of the system; you should once again reiterate for everyone the need too steer way clear of any questionable ((Hyperlinks)) that they may find on the forums threads Incase these scumbags who've started this Bot attack on the forums, bother too use the afore mentioned method listed above; that is if the scums haven't already been using it already....

It's imperative that people understand that not every Spambot infiltration on the forums, may only come from new accounts & that they can still easily come from hijacked accounts aswell...

b:bye

VenusArmani - Dreamweaver · September 2012

frankieraye wrote: »

Thank you all for suggesting ideas to help fight spam; removing it from the forums is a top priority for us.

While I will not go into depth about what methods we are currently using and planning on using in the near future, I will talk about a few of the suggestions that you guys brought up here.

1. User registration CAPTCHA

This could theoretically work, however, it would be a very broad stroke to solve the problem. We're trying to come up with a solution that would not have such a large effect on the entire legitimate player population. The idea of forcing every single potential user to complete a CAPTCHA is not acceptable to us -- a lot of actual people have trouble with CAPTCHAs and, as others have pointed out, CAPTCHAs aren't 100% bot-proof anyway.

2. Thread creation CAPTCHA

This would be great, I completely agree. However, with our version of vBulletin, the only CAPTCHA that can be used is one that works solely for "Guest" users. The option allows us to force Guests to complete a CAPTCHA every time they post. Unfortunately, this is useless to us because we don't allow Guest users to post in the first place -- only Registered Users can post, and that's the usergroup that the spambots are in.

We will actually be upgrading our version of vBulletin soon, which is something we'll all need to talk about in the next couple weeks for other reasons as well. The new version will have new spam-fighting capabilities, which should be great.

3. Level requirement for posting on forums

This was actually a suggestion that was kicked around over here as well. It would 100% be able to stop spambots, however, the problem with it is that it would disable certain legitimate people from posting such as:

a) Users with tech support issues like being unable to download/install the game, graphical issues, login issues etc..

b) Curious people who are just looking for info about the game before they decide to try it out.

We definitely don't want to leave these kinds of users out in the cold.

So again, thank you for the suggestions, and please know that we're taking this issue seriously. We've already implemented a couple of short-term measures, and we'll be adding to them soon with more long-term solutions.

Thanks for the update. Do you know if it's possible that the new upgrade will have a "mark spam," button?

truekossy · September 2012

truekossy wrote: »

They could simply do a somewhat manual forum validation where your first post must be in a specific forum. Bots would be easily weeded out by their posts since it'd be relatively rare for them to have "normal" posts and thus, no validation to begin with. Plus, since making initial posts in that forum, which would be hidden from validated users, means the spam gets contained and doesn't get to affect anywhere else so the rest of the forums stay clean. Besides, since it'd only apply to posting, people who aren't validated yet could still browse... and maybe learn to use the search button in the process.

... or a captcha for those below a certain post count AND below a certain age. That way spamming to bypass it will be discouraged and you can't just steal an old account or alt with no posts.

Anyways, as a default avatar... I kinda don't want to be deleted. b:sad

Simply use first paragraph.

How long does it take to add a CAPTCHA to account creation?

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