[Forum] How to minimize bot registrations

[dan.chesin]

My forum has a CAPTCHA, followed by a user email validation and administrator approval.

We receive 50+ bot registrations each day that are somehow completing CAPTCHA and user email validation. These bots come with obvious spam email extensions like @whatsvps.ru for example.

Is there a certain CAPTCHA I could use to help minimize bot registrations? Is there a way to ban certain email extensions from registering? Any mods/plugins that can help with this? It's very time consuming and frustrating to manage manually.

[1kether1]

Use the question and answer verification. I set up about 10 different questions related to the topics on my boards and it nearly stopped all bot registrations. I have to update the questions every so often, but it is way less work than deleting bots that spam the boards. Good luck, dan.chesin
K

[dan.chesin]

Wayne Luke , Mark.B , any perspective on this? How to minimize bot registrations - CAPTCHA metholodgy, how to blacklist email extensions? Thanks.

[Wayne Luke]

You're using the obsolete Image Verification. This is marginally better than nothing but most bots can get past it. However, most of your registrations are probably human these days. With vBulletin 4, your options are limited. You should use Question and Answer here. I recommend at least 12 different questions specific to your site's topic.

You can ban specific email domains under Settings -> Options -> User Banning Options. However, unless you're going to ban popular free email services like Gmail. Outlook, and Me.com, you won't stop many bots. There used to be addons to help with this at vBulletin.org. I don't know if they are maintained anymore. You can add required custom profile fields.

You would have more options with vBulletin 5.X. That allows you to check registrations against a database of known spammers as well as other options.