As you may have noticed, there has been a recent outbreak of spam bots on the general chat board. They're automatic programs that register to post advertisements and try to get you to buy things. Do not reply to their topics, and most certainly do not click their links. The topics will be deleted in due time, and I am trying to clean them out of the forum as best I can.

Any suggestions to deter them, including spambot-stopping registration codes (ie, type what you see in this image to register), would be greatly appreciated. Otherwise, you'll just have to hang tight. Spring is noob season, and hopefully they'll go away in due time.

I have a question, I can report them right?

Also, I think one way to stop them is to Ban their IP. It worked for my friend's forum. Ban and boom, they're gone.

No, don't report them. It just fills up our inboxes with spam and does nothing, since we delete it whether it's reported or not.

Unfortunately we've tried banning their IP, but they generate random IPs so banning them is all i vain. They generally don't post more than once.

I've had a couple on my forum once. I just deleted them, and I found a common @whatever.blah in their email addresses and banned that. It wasn't like a normal email address; it was like itpromoteinfo.com or something, so I'm pretty sure I didn't ban any innocent people.

Brrrr...I...hate...spam...bots...

Hmm. Do you think we should put that 'Spam Poison' link in the header of the forum? Like the one in Eonlight Valley? Would it work?

^ I don't know. Either way, I added the button at the bottom of the forum - I hope it works...

I got a bunch of common spam bot email address like what Shadow said from the Invisionfree support forum, and although the admin says it'll ban "all spam bots", they're still coming because people will continue making those stupid things.

And like Zephyr said, PLEASE stop reply/reporting them - it is indeed annoying.

Hmm. I'm curious; what does the Spam Poison thing actually do?

It says, 'These links will redirect email harvesting bots to trap sites that will feed it with an almost infinite loop of dynamically generated fake email addresses, mostly on known spammer owned domains! This will render their harvested lists pratically useless and of no commercial value. '

Basically, it does the above.

Ah. So it basically has a coding that makes the spam bots click on it, and then it's stuck there? That's awesome. ^^

It doesn't seem like it's working.

Mmm, unfortunately I think the spam poison is for email-sending bots only. If someone could find a code for invisionfree that attaches an image input when registering (ie, "type what you see in this box to proceed") that would certainly stop them, though.

I looked at the codes in the IF support forum, but I haven't found anything yet, so I made a code request topic... no one has replied yet, though. XD

EDIT:
Apparently, the visual activation is enabled when a lot of users register over a short period of time. Otherwise, there's no other way to do it, and there's no code. -_-

But when I logged off and clicked "Register", there was an image with numbers... so I guess it already activated. o.o

Looks like two more spam bots have appeared in general chat... so please delete their threads. ^^

Either way, I have turned on Admin validation now, so this should stop spambots from posting and an easier way for Zephyr and I to delete them.

OMG people i know a way! Just put the Security Measure(Captcha) thing so spam bots can't get in! I wonder if that will work... I think ya'll should try it...

^Date of last post. Please don't bump old topics; the problem has long since been solved anyhow. But since it was clearly just an honest mistake, I'm not gonna warn you. ^^ Just remember to check the last post date.