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Spindrift
11-13-2011, 10:48 AM
Been trying to make an account for the Secret Santa. I've tried both Chrome and Firefox but get this error message though:

Registration
The following errors occurred during your registration


Image verification could not be verified due to server issues. Please try again later.


I'll try again later in a bit and see if it clears up.

malinghi
11-13-2011, 11:24 AM
Yeah, I saw that. This is a new problem that started yesterday. What's happened is that there are huge numbers of spambots trying to join the site. The human verification scripts are stopping them, but there's so many that its overloading the scripts and no one can register at all. I'm going to switch what kind of captcha we use to see if maybe something else might be less server intensive while I look up a more permanent fix. Sorry about the inconvenience.

malinghi
11-13-2011, 11:30 AM
Try it now. It now uses a question instead of a captcha.

Spindrift
11-13-2011, 12:32 PM
Got it! Thanks :)

AniaR
11-13-2011, 07:35 PM
I notice we've been getting an insane amount of people registering. Like when you view the members online there's like 20 "guests" viewing "registering"

malinghi
11-13-2011, 08:15 PM
Sadly, I don't think those are real people, aniaR. I'm pretty sure they're malevolent robots sent from a dystopian future to sell you Cialis. The human verification measures are keeping them out for now, but its only a matter of time before they become self aware and take over.

Mermaid Saphira
11-15-2011, 04:07 PM
Goodness I certainly hope not! Is there something you can do to keep them out when the captcha can't get them?

malinghi
11-16-2011, 12:41 AM
Goodness I certainly hope not! Is there something you can do to keep them out when the captcha can't get them?

vBulletin has some really good human verification measures. To date I don't think this site has ever had a spambot sign up.

I was mostly kidding, but it is really amazing how sophisticated bots have gotten. Right now instead of a captcha, this site requires all people to answer the following question: "A woman with the lower body of a fish is called a:". But I was warned in what I read online that questions like, "what is 2 + 2?" or, "write the word 'brown'" could be solved by the bots since the answer is contained in the question.