Someone might want to look at the new users being created on the wiki...

fairly obvious bots

[reprap.org]

Hey Dust,

I know this thread is old, but I did look into the user creation issue. I classify it mostly as an annoyance because 95% of the time, they are unable to post any SPAM. However, it does highlight just how useless reCaptcha is.

My plan was to purge the obvious SPAM accounts (random firstname + random lastname + number) without any post history when the database started to fill up with too many. However, there are only about 2000 accounts matching that format as of today, which shouldn't be a problem from a SQL performance or disk space standpoint.

So, the only annoyance is seeing them being created in the recent change log.

I also, two years ago, experimented with using custom Captcha questions. (e.g. What color is the RepRap logo?). It worked for a week or two before the bots were able to get through. It sounds kinda crazy, but I don't believe that they are 100% bots. From past research, the owners of the bot SPAM system actually have humans solving Captchas in a sweat-shop like scenario because people in 3rd-world countries don't mind making a few bucks a day doing the repetitive tasks.

If you have any ideas, let me know. Feel free to hit me up to chat about it as well.

... no, the "bots" are often supported by or merely humans ... don't know, what's motivating them

---

Viktor
--------
Aufruf zum Projekt "Müll-freie Meere" - [reprap.org] -- Deutsche Facebook-Gruppe - [www.facebook.com]

Call for the project "garbage-free seas" - [reprap.org]

The bots are usually spamming with the goal of improving SEO of their target website, which is usually why they try spamming links (search: backlinking). In some other cases, they're just spamming advertisements.

They are actually bots, as evidenced by the fact that the output they produce is often following a very similar pattern (look at their username structure, or the pattern they use on their user talk pages). However, when they encounter a Captcha, the bot sends an API request over to a Captcha-solving farm and the answer is relayed back to the bot. You can see this ZDNet article as a research starting point: "Inside India's CAPTCHA solving economy" [www.zdnet.com]