Wondering what UBB is doing to try to help manage and control all these automated bot spammers. Need something better to stop them if possible, if not then at least better, faster methods to clean up their mess and ban them.

Seeing more and more of them all the time lately

I get at least 10 attempts a day at bots trying to register. Have not had one yet register and get in and stuff.

with captcha, bots don't get in very easily

Well captcha alone has been bypassed now for quite a while
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CAPTCHA

I've spoken with a few other site owners on various board platforms and many seem to be seeing an increase lately in spambot postings, thus the question. There are various methods one can hack into the code to help prevent, but as always it's better to have native code than having to manage hacks made to it.

Right here in the "Shout Box" SteveS says: Spammer in aisle 3! and you replied "cleaned"

How were they able to get on and post here?
I'm sure it's possible that it's a human but many of these posts just don't look like human posters.

i didn't say they _never_ get in

'very easily' was my terminology

and sure, with the new software, recaptcha is a possibility

also for boards who fear bots leaking thru for right now, i've just made it so the 1st and 2nd posts also require captcha.

no bot (or hardly any) is gonna 2 and 3 step thru that maze

so yah, it's possible to put in place hurdles high enough with the current system to prevent spam bots, when needed

but also keeping in mind that v8 would make the captcha even better

Great, thanks for the reply. That's all I'm looking for is some methods to click a setting and make it harder if not nearly impossible for them to post.

Thanks again for the feedback.

btw, humans can break captcha just fine... You'll find that not all of these registrations are automated...

No, I know they're not all bots, but most certainly seem to be.
When you can search Google and find the same entry on dozens or hundreds of sites you know it's not a human doing it.

"Canned Response"

There is big business in forum postings now. Take a look at some of the forums like digitalpoint where you can buy various services. One popular one is forum postings, where you spend some money and they go out and register on forums, fill out the profile and make a few posts, all with the intention to promote the site in question.

That's why you see the same thing multiple times. It's humans, working for cheap.

I understand those, but many of these are pure SPAM nonsense and are not even promoting sites. But I think you've answered my question so thanks.

I approve all of my new registrations, and I really haven't had a spam problem. Doing the approvals is a pain in the neck, though. I run the emails through Google, and any hits from stopforumspam will usually show up there. In many cases, you can see other forums that they belong to, and whether they are legit or not. Suspicious IP addresses are run through stopforumspam directly. I find a few, but not all that many. I'm getting probably 300 new registrations per month, so it is very time consuming for me, and frustrating for the new registrants who want to be posting.

On the registration page Rick needs to add a "human question module", CAPTCHA will not help, when we enabled the human questions available in later versions of vB it stopped all the Xrumer bots from registering.

I beg to differ, the CAPTCHA brought our automated spam posts from about 90 per day to may be 2 per week (and I'm pretty sure those are users paid to register and spam vs bots).