The Bestest Anti-Spam Feature in the Whole Wide World!

[Perry]

http://www.mtsanjacinto.info/
Click on "Register" then "I am over 13...."

It's a very new modification for phpBB forums. In fact, it doesn't even have "beta" status. It's a "mod in development" right now:
http://panda3d.org/josh/photo-captcha.zip
(Josh Yelon wrote this)

There is a very small bug that is easy to fix:
http://www.phpbb.com/phpBB/viewtopic...=asc&start=105

"GD" --> "gd" 4 times

So if you want to put an end to spam on any phpBB message board, this is the way to do it. You'll want to customize the photos and the question. I'm going to use mountain climbing photos and household appliances. A spambot won't know the difference between Mt. Rainier and a white toaster sitting next to a window.

If you have a small forum and want to enable visual confirmation for guests (FF has enough posts as it is), then phpBB does have a mod for that:
http://www.phpbb.com/phpBB/viewtopic...er=asc&start=0

I have not yet tried this to see if they are compatible, but it is compatible with another (weaker) visual confirmation.

Hopefully Vbulletin can get something like this, unless that system already has no problems with spam. Whatever it is (I forgot) it's probably better than the standard phpBB visual confirmation that is incredibly easy to crack by spammers.

This would be a great feature for an email service. Think about it: You register an email address, then upload your own photos and write your own question. Then any new stranger that emails you has to answer the question, otherwise the email silently ends up in the bulk folder which is not displayed in bold like yahoo does.

[Perry]

Ummm....does anybody realize how significant this is?

[MonCapitan2002]

Guest posting is disabled here. All this would do is make the spammers register in order to post spam.

[Ensign Steve]

Cute kitties.

Originally Posted by MonCapitan2002

Guest posting is disabled here. All this would do is make the spammers register in order to post spam.

Anyway, FF uses vBulletin, so I think this thread was posted for the benefit of members here who admin other boards.

[Ensign Steve]

Originally Posted by Perry

Ummm....does anybody realize how significant this is?

Um, no not really. CAPTCHAs are not new.

[Perry]

But this one is unbreakable because it's customizable. You replace the original photos with your own (I haven't done that yet) then create your own question. The php program randomly crops, distorts, and tweaks the gamma of each photo. If you look at the image tags in the HTML (output PHP from server), it's all scrambled so it does not reveal which directory they were placed in or what the image name is. Without access to the original images, and with numerous photo libraries, a spammer can, at best try to identify patterns, but if you deliberately choose photos with similar colors and contrast, then it's extremely difficult for a computer program to categorize.