[ppan]

When registering for the forum, I was asked what P2P stands for. I though it was "person to person", but that was wrong. I also tried "person 2 person", but that was also wrong  .
Maybe take away this question or give a hint.....
(what does p2p stand for?)

And now when I try to post this it asks: "What is Capital City of the USA ?"
However, it does not accept "Washington, D.C."!?

If not Washington, D.C., what is the Capital City of the USA ?

Please make this easier......

I will try to post again 

[rawraw]

Think of another p word that mean someone of equal status.

[Zach]

from: ppan on December 31, 2012, 08:41:15 PM

[TravelingPennies]

And I'd try answers without commas

[Peter]

The answer is Washington. I am going to change that question because you are not the first person to complain.

I had a spamming problem a few months ago so I tried to make the questions challenging for spammers. Sorry for the confusion.

[TravelingPennies]

This is really too difficult.
I now hesitate posting here because I have to spend too much time with the verifications. Just now:
"What city is home to the top two US peer to peer lenders?"
How would I know!?

I had to log out, log in and keep doing this until I got an easier question...

p.s. Washington is a State..... The Capital is Washington D.C.

[william]

I don't get these types of verification questions anymore but they were cumbersome.

[TravelingPennies]

Sorry it is difficult. I am trying to balance making it too easy for spammers but not too difficult for legitimate users. I have removed that last question as well.

As for the capital question - it is one of the preset questions for this software. I think I have five questions now that are acceptable. Sorry once again for making this difficult.

[TravelingPennies]

I think the trick with those type of questions is to make it something non-obvious to robots and Google searches, but still very obvious to any sentient human being and not something you can type in different ways (like Washington DC vs Washington, D.C.).

What is the third letter of the current U.S. president's first name?
Name a major U.S. telephone company that starts with the letter V.
I start with 5 notes on Lending Club and then sell 2 of them on the secondary market. How many notes have I got left?

Stuff like that. Simple word problems or language questions that are too random to come up in google searches.

[TravelingPennies]

Why don't you just use Google Captcha?

[TravelingPennies]

There is a Captcha system along with the verification questions. I have taken this double protective measure because at one stage the forum was overrun with spam and I had to delete 98% of members. So, I err on the conservative side now.

[Keltset]

Captha is easily scripted.... There are various ways of doing it... here is one:

http://www.anarchyforums.net/Thread-Tutorial-How-to-Bypass-and-Hack-Captcha-ReCaptcha-Words-Verification

Word games are always better or even basic math problems.... Most spam is done with a script that goes and registers and posts to forums for the spammer for high quantity.

[AnilG]

I recently removed Google reCaptcha from PeerCube registration as several PeerCube users pointed out that it was almost impossible to read/listen. It appears reCaptcha made it tougher after the last crack. Now it is becoming difficult for even humans to read. I rather deal with spam than make difficult for users to use site.

from: rawraw on January 04, 2013, 07:07:44 AM

[TravelingPennies]

I don't think Captcha is the issue on the site - it has been the registration questions that has caused problems. But I think they are better now.

Unfortunately if I hadn't done something about the spam the forum would have become unusable. At its peak back in 2011 I was getting 200+ spam comments a day.

[core]

One of the questions wouldn't accept "LendingClub" (without spaces) as the answer.  Hey, that's how their logo has it!   I was all bent out of shape until I figured out the problem.  Why would they have their logo say one thing, and legal name another? 

But I really came here to say...

Having been employed by big-name spammers for most of my adult life, I can say with some amount of certainty:  The verification questions do absolutely nothing to deter someone who wants to spam this particular forum.

Indeed, the only reason it worked is because something is now different from the other thousands of forums using this same software so the script kiddies can't just blast away at it along with all the rest.  In other words, it would be equally as effective if you always asked the same question every time, like "Hey dummy, type the word 'snow'".

I'm not divulging anything that they don't already know, so here's how you'd bypass the questions:

- First automatically gather all the possible questions, or at least until they start repeating by a fair amount.  If the population is small (say 100) then just make a config file with the answers,  manually.  Then spam away.  You don't even need all the answers because you can re-request until you get a question to which the answer is known.

Otherwise:
- Take the question text and put it in a ,jpg.  Send this off to your regular decaptcher/etc service and the foreign typers will answer the questions for you just like they type the captchas.  Store the questions and answers because eventually they'll repeat and you can stop paying the typer service $2/1k or whatever.

Would take all of maybe 30 minutes to handle, start to finish.  This forum's now different, and they don't really want to spam it.  That's why it's not getting spammed.


Edit-  I forgot my suggestion.  What about a mouseover which shows the first paragraph of a post when you hover on the subject?  Hard to tell what a subject like "I'm irritated" is going to be about.  Many forums have such a feature.