We're under attack...

You may have noticed spam here for the first time the last few days. Apparently the image captcha for phpbb3 has finally been broken after nearly a year. What that means is that bots can now read the image which will allow them to automatically register. These posts are not made by humans but instead by automated software. I'm currently looking into ways to slow or stop them.

In the mean time if you come across any of these posts please report them, click the ! on the post. This flags it for easy reference by either me or mod so we can remove it quickly.

phpBB has a upgrade in the wings that I can actually install but they had a major meltdown over the weekend and I don't want to bother anyone at the moment to find out which file. The server got hacked though another script they were using not related to phpbb3 itself and the hacker did some major damage, everything has to be gone over with fine tooth comb....

In any event once things get back to normal I'll install it or another mod. I have other options as well such as setting the first post to be queued for approval before it goes public.

I think I have a handle on this as I changed the settings for the captcha image so i was harder to read however I'd like some input on those have recently registered in the last few days if they found it hard to read?

Here's some samples, are they easy enough to read?

I hate them myself but there is very few alternatives, without them forums and other places that allow users to post messages will completely fill with spam. This was huge issue when I was using phpbb2 because the image was easily broken by the bots. These spam posts are all automated from the registration right through to the posting............ It's a battle, they break them so webmasters have to come up with new techniques. I think the image captcha will be dead in short time because the OCR technology keeps getting more sophisticated each day.

I'll look into alternatives such as an audio option. I might even scrap the image altogether and go back to my question test which requires you to answer a question that generally a human would only be able to answer.

You could have just changed the email address on your old account.