Spammers & bots

[Pete Mack]

Right! And no more low low prices for WoW gold. That's going to hurt.

Thanks much pav!

[Garrie]

Just so you know I just recieved this email:

From: joy (phina_awa@yahoo.com)
Sent: Thursday, 18 February 2010 1:12:39 AM
To:

Hi my dear
My name is JOy;i am a single girl not married looking for a nice man who understands love as trust and faith rather seeing it as a way of fun but a matured man with good scene of humor, I found your profile in this site (angband.oook.cz) and derive interest of knowing more about you ,contact me with this address (joyhido1999@hotmail.com ) i believe we can start from here . awaiting your urgent reply so i will send pictures for further introductions
kisses
JOy

Seemed relevant to current discussion!
(Especially since I haven't been here since who-knows-when before tonight!)

[Therem Harth]

Oh hey I just got one of those too (from "Miss Julie", ha ha). Aside from the fact that someone may be harvesting email addresses from here, I have to wonder what sort of strange scam this is.

[Timo Pietilä]

I recommend changing the captcha to something more specific to Angband. I don't think that the bots are specifically targeting this site; they're just scanning for forums they know how to register and post on, and then trying repeatedly to get past the captcha. Change it into something like "What is the first artifact light source most characters find?" (and then doing a regex for "galadriel" on the answer) would probably work pretty well. Or even "What famous fantasy author's work is Angband based on?"

Heck, one site I use just says "Are you human?"

A bit more cryptic: "Ennyn Durin aran Moria. Pedo mellon a minno". [...........]?

[Nick]

A bit more cryptic: "Ennyn Durin aran Moria. Pedo mellon a minno". [...........]?

I like it - except the answer's in the question...

[Timo Pietilä]

I like it - except the answer's in the question...

Of course Derakons original suggestion is better. If you make couple of questions / artifact / monster / item / ability / game mechanics and change them for every wrong question it would take too long for bot to crack it.

"PVAL of Feanor?", ""Fastest" weapon of the game?", "Headgear of Morgoth?" "Low level artifact weapon with ESP?" "Artifact mace of disruption?" "Bodyarmor with banishment activation?", "Ego-weapon for priests with slay demon", "Which non-stat ability in handgear allows mages to use it without penalty?", "stat that increases hitpoints?" "feared dragon golem", "Q that can teleport you away". etc.

[pav]

Oh, well, I don't know answers for 2/3 of those questions myself, so, probably, such a check would repell all new members

[Timo Pietilä]

Oh, well, I don't know answers for 2/3 of those questions myself, so, probably, such a check would repell all new members

Really? I thought those were all easy:

15, Ringil, Massive Iron Crown, Theoden, Deathwreaker, Celeborn, Holy Avenger, Free Action, Constitution, Drolem, Nexus Q (thought that last one quylthulq quytlhuq whatever can't write it can't spell it could be a bit hard).

[pav]

I have implemented the question/answer challenge Timo suggested a while back. Let's see how well that goes.

[Adley]

Problematic : i had forgotten my account password and was trying to recover it, but i can't figure out the answer to that question. In the end i refound my password alone, but still, i'd like to know the answer if i get stuck again one day.

[Timo Pietilä]

Problematic : i had forgotten my account password and was trying to recover it, but i can't figure out the answer to that question. In the end i refound my password alone, but still, i'd like to know the answer if i get stuck again one day.

Use Google or read the books. Answer is in them. Even watching the movie gives you the right answer.

[Hajo]

Use Google or read the books. Answer is in them. Even watching the movie gives you the right answer.

I tried to google the answer when I tried to subscribe, but it took like 5 or so tries till I had the exact wording right. Problem was to find out which part of the quotes that google gave me, actually is the answer to put in there.

[Timo Pietilä]

I tried to google the answer when I tried to subscribe, but it took like 5 or so tries till I had the exact wording right. Problem was to find out which part of the quotes that google gave me, actually is the answer to put in there.

If that question is what I saw when I checked at registration, it is single word.

What was the question? Is it the "Ennyn Durin aran Moria, pedo mellon a minno"?

[Adley]

If that question is what I saw when I checked at registration, it is single word.

What was the question? Is it the "Ennyn Durin aran Moria, pedo mellon a minno"?

Yeah. wikipedia gives the answer, but it took a bit of search. Especially because it's a "... Moria. Pedo mellon a minno" Punctuation means everything ^^.

[Timo Pietilä]

Yeah. wikipedia gives the answer, but it took a bit of search. Especially because it's a "... Moria. Pedo mellon a minno" Punctuation means everything ^^.

Wikipedia actually had an error in that. It said "Pedo mellon a mino" instead of "...minno". Fixed it. Also right way to write that might be

"Ennyn Durin aran Moria: pedo mellon a minno".

It looks like that is the way hardcore Tolkien "encyclopedias" write it. But punctuation in actual elvish writing is something I don't recall just now. Some pages show that there is ":" between those two phrases, but I don't recall Tolkien drawing of it.