What's up with all the spam

[ChirunoScarlet]

CAPTCHAs are useless because the bot programs usually also have some sort of human that can verify the CAPTCHA, or they can break it themselves, although reCAPTCHA takes ages. However, one thing about bots is that they tend to complete the registration form in about 5 seconds, or at least the bots I've seen have done this, so it might make sense to have a wait time on the register page that bans the IP if the registration form is completed in, let's say, under 20 seconds? This should be enough to stop bots and allow humans.

StopForumSpam plugin should be available for vBulletin, that could be implemented if an administrator with server access sees this thread. That could tone down some of the spammers, although I've noticed they use botnet-infected IP ranges and malicious hosts, and some can slip through by using a different IP.

 

[cb600fshornet]

A captcha before creating a thread or posting when post count is below a certain level would probably do it.

 

[ChirunoScarlet]

Again, the spam programs such as XRumer can bypass the CAPTCHAs, so they would be broken rather quickly. My method of blocking registrations made in a very short length of time would stop them quicker and also leave less garbage accounts lying around