Tonight I managed to require that the human-ness question be answered correctly for new users to complete their registration, the previous requirement was any answer at all. Occasionally a spambot does answer correctly but they are few and far between. I don't think any of the 40+ spambots that have flooded the forum since the beginning of 2011 answered the question correctly.

 

Thank you to those who have reported spambot postings, hopefully they will now be slowed down again. I'll add a second human-ness question if need be.

Tonight I managed to require that the human-ness question be answered correctly for new users to complete their registration, the previous requirement was any answer at all. Occasionally a spambot does answer correctly but they are few and far between. I don't think any of the 40+ spambots that have flooded the forum since the beginning of 2011 answered the question correctly.

 

Thank you to those who have reported spambot postings, hopefully they will now be slowed down again. I'll add a second human-ness question if need be.

 

Any Idea why the activity of those bots has increased that much new year?

 

I observe the same in my own forum, but because we´re a german speaking boating forum, i can block whole IP ranges without much collateral damage....

I don't know why Rene but it seems to be universal. The vendor of this forum software has seen a 30% or so increase in the spambot registrations since the beginning of the year. Unfortunately we're a version behind here so I had to hack the forum code to add that little extra verification but it works in testing.