Upgrade your security already!

**Dave-The-Rave** · 10-14-2012

Seriously the amount of spambots, threads and posts both on the forum and the articles is getting ridiculous now. Seems to be ban one and 50 more pop up.

You guys really need to upgrade the security for the site, other sites have systems in place to stop bots from registering like those things were you need human input to get past. (E.g. Type out the letters in the picture)...

Just get something done.

**Cybertox** · 10-14-2012

Expect the typical reply: Its very hard to do so and we dont have enough programming power.

If they cant even add additional payment methods and fix bugs, you think they will be able to make a better security system?
I dont think so...

**-Kwesnoth-** · 10-14-2012

Its too easy to bypass IP bans and what not. They don't know its a spam bot till it spams.

**DeviousOne** · 10-14-2012

We just got to continue to report them. I know I always do as soon as I see it. I've seen worse spam on other forums but mods are always on top of it we can help by reporting it.

**squirrelbo1** · 10-14-2012

The site requires captcha to sign up. And ip bans are so easy to bypass.

Sent from my HTC One X using Tapatalk 2

**Wrath** · 10-14-2012

Originally Posted by squirrelbo1

The site requires captcha to sign up. And ip bans are so easy to bypass.

Sent from my HTC One X using Tapatalk 2

But how come this seems to be far less of an issue for other websites? Hell, almost 90% of all PSU articles are filled with spam bots in the comment section.

**Fenix** · 10-14-2012

Captcha doesnt seem to block all spambots, my friend has a phpbb forum with captcha and bots can still sign up and spam.

**Dave-The-Rave** · 10-14-2012

http://www.nucaptcha.com/

**SchaffinOSX** · 10-14-2012

Originally Posted by Dave-The-Rave

http://www.nucaptcha.com/

That's the first I've ever heard of that. Sounds like something we should look into as a site.

**Blacksite** · 10-14-2012

Originally Posted by -Kwesnoth-

Its too easy to bypass IP bans and what not. They don't know its a spam bot till it spams.

Usually, yeah. But there are certain details that stick out if you're browsing the profile, like the username and what kind of information they include in their location, PSN ID, signature etc. It takes no time at all to ban and clean up the thread.

**Vulgotha** · 10-14-2012

PSU has never been the pinnacle of forum technology and technical management. In spite of its heavy amount of traffic and avid user base.

It's pretty poor.

**Cuguy** · 10-15-2012

Spam bots have, and always will be an issue on sites.

Whether you see them on other sites or not, bots are there.

Some people just use a human to sign up an account, then once the account is active, a bot takes over and starts posting.

For everything we put up, they will defeat it.

I will pass along the concern, but it isn't anything we don't already discuss.

The main issue is, forum security and homepage security are two separate beasts because of how Vbulletin here was established in 2005. Policies in place here, features, don't apply to the homepage coding. Swear filters, post counts rules, etc... all that automatic built-in feature sets do not apply to the homepage. Hell for the longest time, the homepage and forums required two separate log ins.

Unfortunately, Cybertoxs smart answer is also partially correct. PSU cannot afford a full time dedicated programmer to rebuild and restructure homepage security at a whim. We sort of made the decision to moderate out the trolls and bots. Captcha is in place as well which dropped bot sign ups exponentially. There are ways around it, and IP bans, so we will never be rid of them.

**F34R** · 10-15-2012

Basically the only answer is more staff activity in that area. I know it's "one of those things" but with the limits of all the other abilities, that's about the only thing that could help at this point.