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Hey all. I havea Q2A site that just got hit by some spammers, and I'm wondering why there isn't a simple drop-down box under the "Spam" section for any kind of Q&A spam protection? That seems to work far better than reCaptcha, which is presently the only option in the "Spam" section.

 

An example of a Q&A spam protection would be letting the admin set any number of questions they want, along with the correct answer. For example: Q. What is the color of my red shirt that I'm wearing? A. red

Another example could be: Fill in the blank... "I'm coo coo for Coco-_____!" A. Puffs

This has proven to be the most effective spam prevention I have used to date being the questions that are asked are entirely up to the admin and differ from site to site, and no script can be written to pull every possible question on the planet with the correct answer. So, has anyone written a MOD like this that will allow it? Otherwise, I'm probably just gonna shut the Q2A site down. reCaptcha is garbage for users and for preventing bots. Thanks.
Q2A version: latest
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edited by
you can also check out this existing anti-captcha plugin: http://www.question2answer.org/qa/4056/how-to-install-numeral-captcha or use the new PREMIUM plugin at http://www.q2apro.com/plugins/stop-spam

1 Answer

–2 votes
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edited by

reCaptcha works quite well in my opinion. I correct myself, I guess 10 % of my users cannot read the reCaptcha when trying first (which however does not mean that they try it again...)

Additionally I am using a filter module to reject spammy answers and questions, by checking the content for unwanted words. This works great to block spam.

see http://www.question2answer.org/modules.php?module=filter

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*** New premium plugin released at http://www.q2apro.com/plugins/stop-spam - It solved all my problems, spam posts by bots is 0 now, for several months!

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Yeah, reCaptcha does ok, but it is still far inferior to a simple question with answer blank, or, fill in the blank form, being that reCaptcha relies on code that can be cracked, whereas, randomly asked questions on each and every different site along with different answers is impossible to code spam related software to being the bot will have no possible idea to know what question is being asked, what KIND of question is being asked, etc. Now that reCaptcha has been cracked, it's just another soon to be useless anti-spam. Not to mention, insanely difficult to read.
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+1 for the "insanely difficult to read" thing ;)
and thanks for the -1 vote, haven't had it for a long time.
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lol no offense man. Just wanted to let others know that I wasn't happy with the answer. Not looking for new opinions on how to feel about reCaptcha. It's junk because, it's difficult to read (imagining a grandma who can barely find her way to the browser, let alone fill out a reCaptcha) and the fact that it's been cracked now means, new solutions needed. But thanks for taking the time to reply anyways!
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edited by
you might want to implement a mouse catpcha (is not yet so popular in spammer domains): http://www.josscrowcroft.com/demos/motioncaptcha/

But as mentioned here, it will not be 100% save: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/15443873/anti-captcha-using-mouse-detection

If you are concerned, consider using a Honeypot. Or only allow registration via facebook and other platforms.

Personally, I would load the entire captcha via javascript/jquery so that "normal bots" cannot touch it, and thus have rarely a chance to write a post in your forum.

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Edit: Read here as well: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/471031/are-there-any-alternatives-to-recaptcha-net-for-stopping-spam
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The best answer in the following post is a great approach, but your users need javascript enabled: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/8472/practical-non-image-based-captcha-approaches
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