stop register forum spammers

isn't it possible to make it a bit more difficult for forum-spammers to register as new users here?
Perhaps with some simple (random) questions about MODX, which needs to be answered correctly before one can create an account or something like that?

bump

Mainly it is just one guy spamming his live streaming stuff.

When it is easy to delete these spam-posts/topics by "spam-admins" then the spammer will eventialy probably will stop doing it I think. Some trusted members need to have permissions to delete them.

Hmm, it does looks like the spammer made a script and can make new accounts automaticly.
Then the new user register form needs to be better protected.

Hmm, it does looks like the spammer made a script and can make new accounts automaticly.
Then the new user register form needs to be better protected.

that's what I'm talking about.
Seems, he has created a bot, which does register automatically new accounts.
Spend yesterday some time, trying to ban a ton of them and mark threads and posts as spam.

But this doesn't help much, as long as he can allways register new accounts with his script.

Yeah it looks like time to take some precautions. When its just a few posts its just easier to delete most and call it a day. But this was pretty awful at least from the user's perspective and probably from the admin side too.

I disabled the registrations yesterday afternoon. I am working with the team to clean these. Looking at the way posts were done it's hard to tell if they were bots. When I logged everyone out of modx.com they were able to log back in in a matter of minutes. Posts were not random and some accounts were posting replies.

This doesn't look like full automation but link spam operations done by low paid people. Especially since we have 3 layers of spam protection on the registration including math, stop forum spam and blank field validation. I believe it would be necessary to be on the registration form to actually register. There are two on the site and only the main one appears to be used for registrations for these "accounts"

On the "random MODX question" we do have math on the page, but putting a MODX question on the site might be worth while. We'll consider it. In the mean time, I need to get rid of the bad users/bad posts. We'll hopefully be able to do this from the database and/or dashboard.

Quote from: smashingred at Sep 22, 2014, 07:16 AM

On the "random MODX question" we do have math on the page, but putting a MODX question on the site might be worth while. We'll consider it.

Be careful of a Catch-22. If you ask a Modx question that defeats a real (but not Modx) person, you may also defeat a real, but inexperienced Modx person. In other words, your core audience.

Wouldn't recaptcha be a whole lot more effective on the registration page?

Also I see the use of type="hidden" field for anti-spam. More effective to use a regular email field but hide it with css.

I've managed to clean most of the spam since yesterday. I've blocked a number of email domains and IP blocks. After manually deleting nearly 400 messages, I am convinced this is not a bot attack. This appears to be link spammers, possibly using TOR and several disposable email services.