XF 1.5 Spammer breaking reCAPTCHA?

[PJK]

For over a year we've used reCAPTCHA to prevent spam registrations using the top setting:
Use reCAPTCHA
No extra configuration is required for this CAPTCHA.

However, it appeared to break recently so I enabled "Use reCAPTCHA (No CAPTCHA)". However, still having issues. As of the last 2 weeks have got tons of new spam registrations. How are they breaking this and what do you suggest to solve the issue?

Thanks.

 

[Bryan]

All versions of reCAPTCHA have now been defeated, bots can bypass them with ease.

*Edit: On second reading it came across that reCAPTCHA serves no further purpose, this is not the case and you should contiue to use them along with SFS and akismet too.

 

[PJK]

Oh, is this a recent thing? It worked great for years.

What is the recommended action to take now to defend against spam?

 

[M@rc]

The question & answer helps reduce spam bots on my forum.

 

[Chris D]

They have been defeated at one time but they don’t just leave it broken. They adapt and adjust their heuristics to prevent such things.

It’s really quite astonishing how many people think it gets cracked and they just leave it broken.

The fact is that most spam these days is generated by humans so captchas are fairy useless against them.

 

[duderuud]

Indeed. Ask a simple question for your niche but that is probably very hard for a bot or an outstander

 

[Bryan]

@Chris D There are tools now that are updated as regularly as the recaptcha is updated, it has become a game of cat and mouse as with many things in the digital world. If you have it enabled along with SFS and Akismet, you've done all you can do, it's time for those lazy mods to earn their titles.

 

[Chris D]

Of course it is a game of cat and mouse, but that shouldn’t mean to imply that it’s effectively useless. Q&A captchas can be cracked too either by the bots being able to comprehend the correct answer or having a human crack it and store the answer so it can be answered automatically in the future.

Overall I suggest the same as you though. Spam phrases are a huge help. We have Akismet here and most of our spam is caught by both spam phrases and Akismet. Active moderation is always effective too.

 

[Bryan]

@Chris D Sorry to drag this subject out but do you use a publically available maintained list for your spam phrases or are they based around spam you have encountered here?

 

[Chris D]

We’ve built the list up over time. The spam cleaner action moves the threads to a hidden forum rather than deleting it so we can analyse that over time and add more and more phrases.