Using questions as a spam prevention

Beverly Level X³

January 8, 2014, 5:52 pm

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Using questions as a spam prevention

On some forums where I sign up, they have questions that have to be answered before registration is allowed. But, usually the questions are way too easy and could easily be cracked or anticipated by a forum spammer software. For instance, a common question posed is: What is the sum of 5+3.

This is just way too easy.

What are some examples of questions you should avoid for forum sign ups and alternative questions you might use instead to help eliminate spam signups on a forum?

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Marlin

Marlin

Sometimes you will come upon sites that ask you for the first or last letter of the site name. And, that is usually very effective as it requires active thought and not easily searched on Google by a bot. Another good one would be to ask the person registering a state specific question, assuming it relates to the niche of the forum.

11 years ago

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Keith

Keith

If the question is related to your niche, that helps a lot. So for instance, if you have a math forum, you might use an equation that someone in your math niche would recognize. Or, use a visual puzzle that a bot could not solve. This could be more effective than a question/answer type situation.

11 years ago

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Quinton

Quinton

Such a simple forum system to beat. You will want to use a more complex spam prevention method, if you really want to keep spammers off your forum. Most bot software are programmed with lists of questions that can be used to answer anything like this.

11 years ago

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Corzhens

Corzhens

In one forum, the question to be answered was the spelling of the word in backward form. I don’t know if that is difficult for a bot. But one of the hardest anti-bot question is the use of images. Given 6 images, click on the 2 or 3 images that refer to an animal. I think that is not an easy question for the bot because it is using images. But I prefer those anti spam methods than captcha. To be honest, I failed to register in some sites with the difficult captcha that I gave up in exasperation.

7 years ago

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Kakashi2020

Kakashi2020

Some sites are asking my Favorite Color or My Pets Name and I think it's very effective but I guess the best would be clicking images because bots can't process that.

6 years ago

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