Permissions

[retina]

Originally Posted by chalsall

It's a (possibly temporary, possibly permanent) security precaution. Rather not go into the details....

Actually, I don't quite understand how stopping guest reading will cut down on robot registrations. Do the robots "think" that if the general public cannot read their spam then posting it is a waste of time? I though they were indiscriminate and just spammed everything they could.

It will cut down on potential new contributors from entering. I know that I never bother to register on any other board just to read what they are talking about. It is too much hassle to go through when I don't already know the quality of what is there.

Sorry about spamming the board and posting another reply instead of editing my last post.

[CRGreathouse]

Originally Posted by retina

I am surprised the robot spammers can solve the captcha AND know the answer to "What is 2^32-1?"^[1]. Those robot AIs sure are coming along quite well these days.

Often/usually they use humans for that.

[kladner]

I'm pretty sure this may have been posted previously, but it is topical.
http://www.gizmag.com/captcha-beating-ai/29559/

I wonder how algorithms are doing against my current fave form of CAPTCHA. On the Western Digital user forum, on every login, you are given a box with red and black characters in it. You are instructed to type only the black characters.

[danaj]

I was once told that a common way they beat captchas is link to another web site, so they get humans to do your captcha for them. E.g. their website says "enter the captcha for the next XXX photo" along with your Captcha image, then it takes the mark's response and sends to your website. There you go -- endless stream of humans solving Captchas for them, for the low price of showing people photos that were skimmed from yet other websites.

[jasonp]

There are captchas that ask you to factor random numbers, and even factor random quadratic or cubic polynomials. i.e. humans who can't remember high school algebra would not be allowed to post here. If you want to be even more exclusive, I've seen a captcha generator which can make up and render a nasty calculus limit problem you have to solve, i.e. if you've forgotten freshman calculus you don't get to post here.

(After one of my friends left a previous job, I showed him the job ad posted for his replacement, and my friend would not have qualified on paper for the job he had actually been doing)

Some of the best captchas are the ones where you have to actually know context about the specific site, i.e. find a keyword based answer to 'what are three things we discuss on mersenneforum?'

[xilman]

Originally Posted by CRGreathouse

Often/usually they use humans for that.

What's the old saying? Something like "Never send in a human to do a machine's job".

At least 90% of the spam email I receive goes straight into the Junk folder before I even get a chance to read it.

The implication should be clear.

[retina]

Originally Posted by jasonp

Some of the best captchas are the ones where you have to actually know context about the specific site, i.e. find a keyword based answer to 'what are three things we discuss on mersenneforum?'

That doesn't work when new registrants can't read the forum to answer the questions.

[henryzz]

Originally Posted by xilman

What's the old saying? Something like "Never send in a human to do a machine's job".

At least 90% of the spam email I receive goes straight into the Junk folder before I even get a chance to read it.

The implication should be clear.

Is there not a plugin for the forum that would help with this automation? If a bit of money is needed I am sure people would donate for the mods' sanity.

[chris2be8]

The obvious security hole on mersenneforum is that is does not use https to encrypt your password. So the NSA almost certainly know everyone's password (I don't know if Edward Snowden took copies). And anyone else able to sniff traffic will as well.

Please don't use the same password for anything important. Eg Banking.

Chris

[f1pokerspeed]

In my opinion, captchas are useless. Anyone with half a mind can just get past them, and even a tough problem? Wolfram Alpha or Microsoft Mathematics could (probably) solve it.

If the forum used Drupal, I'd use BOTCHA - heuristic analysis, transparent to users but catches more bots than a simple CAPTCHA can. Does anyone know of anything similar that would be compatible with vBulletin?

[CRGreathouse]

Originally Posted by xilman

What's the old saying? Something like "Never send in a human to do a machine's job".

At least 90% of the spam email I receive goes straight into the Junk folder before I even get a chance to read it.

My experience moderating other forums is similar: most of the automated spam is stopped before it's ever posted. Almost all of the spam that gets through and needs to be moderated is posted by humans (usually with IP addresses from low-wage areas of the globe).