24 Sep, 2014, Tijer wrote in the 1st comment:
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looks like you may have had a fair few spam bots getting in???
24 Sep, 2014, Tijer wrote in the 2nd comment:
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yup the same people who were getting through my "captchas" can see they are spam bots by their website info!!!
24 Sep, 2014, lurker_veteran wrote in the 3rd comment:
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Maybe MUDs just became widely popular overnight.
24 Sep, 2014, plamzi wrote in the 4th comment:
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Tijer said:
yup the same people who were getting through my "captchas" can see they are spam bots by their website info!!!


That's kind of offensive because NAguilera was my nickname in high school, and I worked very hard on http://terrehautecleaningjanitorial.s3.a... :(
24 Sep, 2014, arholly wrote in the 5th comment:
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You worked in Indiana? Still there?
24 Sep, 2014, roguewombat wrote in the 6th comment:
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lol, he was joking. ; )
24 Sep, 2014, Tijer wrote in the 7th comment:
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one one gets through.. the flood gates open!! :(… thats the problem problem with QSF!!
25 Sep, 2014, Davion wrote in the 8th comment:
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http://www.reddit.com/r/MUD/comments/2fs...

We kinda unleashed the hounds our selves. We'll figure something out.
25 Sep, 2014, Rarva.Riendf wrote in the 9th comment:
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>Maybe MUDs just became widely popular overnight.

nah, jsut the proof spammer are not sentient 'yet'.
25 Sep, 2014, Tijer wrote in the 10th comment:
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perhaps until you sort this maybe stop the new signups showing on the recent updates part of the front page?
25 Sep, 2014, Ssolvarain wrote in the 11th comment:
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Someone's having a field day.
25 Sep, 2014, plamzi wrote in the 12th comment:
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It's getting old, and I have no jokes :(
25 Sep, 2014, Ssolvarain wrote in the 13th comment:
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*bails water* :tongue:
26 Sep, 2014, Pymeus wrote in the 14th comment:
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No idea if my experience will be of any help to you, but captchas aren't the only way to stymie a bot.

I was able to get one forum (not our mud's) that was getting a few hundred bot sign ups per week down to zero bot signups in a year, by replacing their captcha with a single static question, one whose answer couldn't be searched (some bots query Google and Bing for possible answers). I think my question asked the name of a specific menu item (or maybe it was a tab) in the site's layout, a question which most computer-literate people can easily answer. Since the menu and/or tab set that I was asking about was just a bunch of arranged links, the thinking was that most bots would be unable to make the cognitive connection between the arrangement of links and a "menu" (or "tab") as recognized by a human. So far, it's worked.

Of course, bear in mind that if the spam is targeted, it only takes a moment for a human to feed the correct answer to a bot.
26 Sep, 2014, Nathan wrote in the 15th comment:
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I guess you just need a registration form with some questions (early mud codebases and their derivatives, names of the people who coded them, obscure segments of their licenses, math problems) that would be pretty hard for a bot to handle. If you still have the problem, then it's targeted spam.

P.S. Given the image captcha on the registration form, I think someone is being annoying on purpose. They either have a very intelligent bot and/or there is some kinda of free, internet-based captcha processor or they are expending a lot of effort to be obnoxious/get attention. Will ignoring them make it go away?
27 Sep, 2014, Pymeus wrote in the 16th comment:
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Bots have been breaking captchas for at least 7 years, to say nothing of all the ways they can dupe a random, relatively innocent person into doing the job for them. As bots improve, captchas have to evolve to stay ahead. I'd be wary of math problem "captchas" too, although the bots hitting MB aren't necessarily ones designed to deal with it.

Bots are usually unattended, and of course the bot itself doesn't care. Ignoring them usually doesn't change anything, but YMMV.
27 Sep, 2014, Davion wrote in the 17th comment:
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I definitely don't intend to ignore them. I've put in something simple. Hopefully a honeypot catches them.
27 Sep, 2014, Davion wrote in the 18th comment:
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Hopefully this time. Had a bit more time today to look at it and put in three random questions
27 Sep, 2014, Ssolvarain wrote in the 19th comment:
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Klaatu barada n*cough*
0.0/19