What's with all the spam posts?

[stefanstr]

In the last few weeks, I have noticed an increasing number of spammers (spambots?) creating accounts on the forum and ...well... spamming.

Has this always been that way and I never noticed because I didn't spend as much time on the forum? Or is it new?

What can we do to make it more difficult for spammers to spoil our fun?

Maybe the first few posts of a person should go through the moderators before they are published? I don't know. These "I am the new guy" topics all over the forum are starting to annoy me.

[Shinzy]

I think they haven't been around for long
they've all stayed on the offtopic forum too so it's not a big deal for me
and they kindly enough name the topic very recogniseably so I know to ignore them
without giving them much of a thought

If you can't punch it, just pretend it doesn't exist and you spare your nerves
(works with every online interaction ever!)

[skullywag]

Its cuz captchas and the like really arent any good anymore, most have been cracked so bots can get through now. Not much you can do bar moderate which they do brilliantly here, if you see one report it using the "report to moderator" button, or as Shinzy says ignore it.

[Tynan]

Yes, unfortunately I've been struggling to find an automated solution and failing. As mentioned, automated CAPTCHA solvers are really good now. For example, I tried Google's reCaptcha on the wiki and there would still be a new spammer signup every hour.

On the forums, I've got it running with a bunch of questions I wrote, which seems to work okay. Same here. But we'll always have to moderate it a bit, I think.

[Coenmcj]

Indeed, they've mostly kept to the off-topic forums, but have recently started invading other threads in the general section, among others.

It's probably just the one person, it always uses the same formulae to format it's posts and accounts;

Lorem ipsum

Clickbait : Offsite link

[Mikhail Reign]

Captcha are useless. There is a thriving bitcoin market solely based on having people complete Capchas's enmass. They get put into a database...