Report form need a captcha to stop spambots

[IPBSupport.de]

Has anyone from IPS actually replied or read this thread yet? It's frustrating if feedback is not acknowledged? Perhaps they should introduce a voting system for new features so they can properly gauge which ideas are in high demand?

I informed Matt and Brandon about the problem and matt said...

So: Yes, they read this thread and i hope we will see a captcha in 3.4

[Jυra]

He doesn't look very thrilled. Maybe he's bored with IPB.

[Alfa1]

The only spammers that use report forms for spam are bots. Bots can be blocked with Bad Behavior, by form completion time tracking and by using hidden fields. There is no need to bother real users with Captha. Captha will just be broken again and again.

If you want to use Captha and if IPS is willing to add it, then by all means do so. IMHO there are smarter, more effective ways.

I get 2 million monthly uniques and no spam. I do not use captha.

[Jυra]

I've never tried hidden field stuff since I've always imagined it blocking people.

[Marcher Technologies]

The only spammers that use report forms for spam are bots. Bots can be blocked with Bad Behavior, by form completion time tracking and by using hidden fields. There is no need to bother real users with Captha. Captha will just be broken again and again.

If you want to use Captha and if IPS is willing to add it, then by all means do so. IMHO there are smarter, more effective ways.

I get 2 million monthly uniques and no spam. I do not use captha.

Gods help you when paid human spammers hit. Hidden fields are quite manipulable.

Bots, I am seeing used less in favour of a human.

[Alfa1]

Gods help you when paid human spammers hit. Hidden fields are quite manipulable.

Bots, I am seeing used less in favour of a human.

Yes, that's true. But human spammers rarely spam report forms. And that's what's suggested here. For registration and guest postings there are additional possibilities like stopforumspam, projecthoneypot, wise use of custom profile fields & usergroup permissions, moderation queue, etc.

We get loads of human spammers, but they rarely get through all the hoops they need to jump through. And if they do, we kill the spam within minutes.

[Wolfie]

Gods help you when paid human spammers hit. Hidden fields are quite manipulable.

Hidden fields can be effective, with the main problem being how to hide it from humans but make it seem visible to bots, so that bots will try to fill it. I use NoScript on FF and so sometimes I see things that are supposed to be invisible (unless an option is toggled), so if it's something that would show for me (and others who use whitelisting vs blacklisting), then it's not a good method. Still though, the concept itself is a good one.

[Washerhelp]

I'm having issues with "guests" reporting content which turns out to be just full of ridiculous spam links. It's frustrating to find this old thread and lack of a proper solution in 2017. 

A lot of people seem to assume everyone uses their forums the same way as they do and can't understand why their solution isn't ideal. If you run your forums in a certain way the solutions is simple. Ban guests from reporting. Problem solved. This solution is no good for many of us though because our forums are run in a different way, and this isn't being taken into account.

My forums are used mostly by guests. It's a resource for helping people with white goods appliance problems. The only people that register are people who can't find a solution and want to ask a question. I have posts that have been read 10,000 times and only a fraction would be by members. The vast majority of people reading my forums are guests. Therefore, banning guests from reporting something makes no sense. I would not expect someone to go to the trouble of registering just to help me out reporting something.

Having said that, adding Captcha (which can notoriously hinder some people) may also discourage them. So could the solution not be to ensure that such reports are properly spam checked? The ones I get are simply lists of up to a dozen spam links. How can they possibly be getting through the built in spam protection?

So, allowing guests to report content is only silly if your forums are set up so that only members can use them. That's clearly appropriate for many, but not all. Many forums don't treat guests as suspicious characters. To me they are my users. I don't want to ban them from reporting content, so I would like a better solution to this problem  

Are content reports properly spam checked? If so how can a content report get through that contains no communication, no sentences - just a list of spam links?

[Adriano Faria]

3 minutes ago, Washerhelp said:

I'm having issues with "guests" reporting content which turns out to be just full of ridiculous spam links.

Just disallow guests from reporting... Simple and fast.

ACP -> Groups -> Guest -> Content -> Can report content? -> No.

[Washerhelp]

Thanks, but did you read my post? I want guests to be able to report. Guests make up 90% of my users. I need the spam to be blocked properly. A report that is just a list of spam links should be easy to identify and block but they are not being blocked.

[Daniel F]

Strange. Captcha is included in the status report form and to comments, but not to the "item" report forms.

I think that this was only an oversight and have fixed this.

[opentype]

52 minutes ago, Washerhelp said:

Having said that, adding Captcha (which can notoriously hinder some people) may also discourage them.

I think it’s acceptable to hit one (reCaptcha 2) button to signal you are a human and not a bot. And an invisible version is coming as well. 

[Washerhelp]

I've had another one yesterday. Just to give an example of the thing I'm getting I'm pasting it here with the links disabled of course  -

 

Guest

(IP: 46.161.9.24)

Report submitted 16 hours ago

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I'm just surprised that this isn't being picked up as 100% pure spam

I do appreciate that disabling guest reporting is a total fix for many people but guests being able to report something dodgy - or possibly very offensive is a very useful thing to have on forums that are mostly used by guests rather than a tight community.There must be many forums like mine that are a help resource visited by hundreds of thousands of people after searching in Google that never become members and are therefore "guests"