Turned on the Spambot countermeasures now they have to fight the 3D image challenge.

See if that helps with the bots.

Getting a lot Spammers from targettmail.com and trendesmail.com so those domains are now BAN!

Note to self go to General/Spambot countermeasures for settings.

Yeah it's a never ending battle.
I just wish there was a way to send an electronic nuke right back to the computer that sent that junk and just melt the machine right in the goofs hands.
CO

Yeah tech is evolving they find new ways to circumvent and automate the create account process, years ago I could post their IP addresses and let users abuse (Nuke) the connections into oblivion, now days I am sure they are using fake IP addresses so you would just be Nuking some poor innocent victim. If I would spend a great amount of time researching and installing the latest amount of countermeasures design to detect bots I could block them all. The only problem is then innocent legit people can get caught up and would not be allowed to create an account and find help or contribute.

Imagine if this was your site, I stumbled onto it and wanted to share my knowledge but could not get past the create account process and out of frustration of not being able to create an account just moved on. My knowledge and experiences would never be shared.

I rather fight the bots and delete the spam accounts the manual way over losing a quality member. Spam bots come in waves, this is a low volume site so its not as big of a target like Twitter or Facebook, they could care less how many legit users they lose they have thousands of new accounts created daily. The bots will leave once they see the 20 accounts the created were deleted when they come back to flood the site a few days later. Its an election year so I figure as we get closer to the election another wave of bots will appear.

I am sure AI will evolve and to the point we will have AI bots sighing up, replying to post like humans then start sending private messages to users with witty messages to lure them to another site and sell products. When we reach that point I will be forced to tighten up the site to flush them out, this will frustrate the human members to no end. There has been a LOT of discussion of AI being most of the internet traffic in the future and the fear of online advertisers and sales taking a huge hit.

That would be awesome! Especially since they just hit again this morning after spam bot measures was turned on

Mutts! I just deleted 11 new accounts that were created today 2-11-24, none were activated yet. Meaning they created the accounts and never logged in.

Just deleted 22 more accounts created today.

We had about another 15+ spammers sign up in the past 24 hrs so had to make the image to get the code you need to enter harder too read, AI is getting pretty good. Sorry new users.

Just deleted another 6 fresh accounts created overnight. Wonder if this is why?

Microsoft, OpenAI Claim State-Sponsored Hackers Are Using AI to Boost Cyberattacks
https://www.breitbart.com/tech/2024/02/ ... erattacks/

Guessing this is only the beginning of the AI nightmare. Billionaires who has access to unlimited funds and can afford the Quantum Computers.

This site might end up invite only to create an account. Meaning you will have too email me to get permission to create an account.
Might have to do some phpBB homework.

I don't know if email will even work.
Your in box might just get flooded with emails and spam .
CO

Would it be possible to do a math problem for a sign in ?
Something simple but it would require the new member to type in the correct result.

By posting the current sign , all the spam bot has to do is type in what you have posted.
If the sign in was a question or a math question it would require it to post the correct reply.

Just thinking out loud.
CO

Switching it to they have to answer a question.

Questions

For every form submission where you have enabled the Q&A plugin, users will be asked one of the questions specified here. To use this plugin at least one question must be set in the default language. These questions should be easy for your target audience to answer but beyond the ability of a bot capable of running a Google™ search. Using a large and regularly changed set of questions will yield the best results. Enable the strict setting if your question relies on mixed case, punctuation or whitespace.

Below is an example but not what I am using
Question is Type the middle fifteen characters of *AllLivesMatter+ in the box
Answer is ?

Now you see the format If you want to submit a question to me by private message go ahead I will add it to the list of questions.

Bots a getting interactive now and creating post, make sure NOT to click on any of the links they provide unless you know what your doing and the potential risk involved. I am not up on all the latest and greatest browsers attacks out there I know there is a bunch of them for Microsoft users. This is why I quit using Microsoft anything back when support for Windows 2000 ended security updates.

I switched to Linux and or Debian distro's and never looked back. That said I have noticed a up tic in Linux and Debian breaches in the past 12 months. Those thinking about getting away from Windows/Apple a good starting point is here https://distrowatch.com/

I am almost to the point of doing all my daily stuff using Tails https://tails.net/index.en.html
Watch videos about Tails on YouTube

And using Tails with Persistence for data I want to save like emails or downloads I want to keep. Watch Tails with Persistence videos on YouTube to get a feel for what it is and how it works.

For example if you wanted to follow a shady link you seen you can spin up a Tails system and if it damages your Tails session, infects your session with malware, spyware, viruses etc. you just shut down and everything is deleted then when you boot back up again its a whole new operating system. everything runs in Ram and is deleted completely about 30 seconds after the computer is turned off.

You can run Tails on a old computer that does not even have a hard drive. If you wanted to save something you downloaded you can save it to another external drive.

That http tails link was interesting read.
CO

It is, you can also set it up with Persistence so it keeps your bookmarks and other data, read up on it in detail before using so you know what your getting into.

I use to use Tails for when I was not home to check email and surf the web.

You can multi boot too https://forums.hak5.org/topic/51253-kal ... -same-usb/
Quad core computer on a USB https://hak5.org/collections/best-selli ... bash-bunny
You can see the inside picture here https://firewire-revolution.de/shop/meh ... ld-guide/#

Build your own https://www.hackster.io/news/build-an-a ... a4abf7bde5
Pi Zero 2 W here for $15 US https://www.raspberrypi.com/products/ra ... -zero-2-w/

I watched a video a few weeks back where they were flipping votes on US electronic voting machines, you only had to plug in the USB device for like 8 seconds to reprogram the machine. People were even see at polling locations plugging something into the USB slots on voting machines. After the elections you spend another 8 seconds resetting the equipment back to normal so it passes the inspections.

I just deleted 26 newly created accounts by the spambots and switched it back over to asking the question rather than playing guess the image. Those images are old so by now the spammers know the numbers to try to pass the test, there is only so many different combinations.

Latest new member magVen Email darbarritesh@rediffmail.com Known spammer, account DELETED
https://cleantalk.org/blacklists/darbar ... ffmail.com

IP address 38.152.27.34

Are these spammers just bored to death and have nothing better to do?

They are Robots, its computers automatically signing up accounts.

Sooner or later they will send a human to create an account and learn the questions I am asking then I will have to change the questions to fort the bots.