Site Captcha updates to help block spam...

[FuzzySideDown]

Hey gang.....

I updated the sites spam controls a bit... It's now using Googles ReCaptcha v3, which is the score based captcha...The old option was only active for User Registration only. I believe I have it on now for the following situations.

User Registrations.
Sending PM's
Contacting Admin's
Posting a post in the following Forums.

General Glacier Discussion
Non Park Related Topics

I'd like to take this for a spin for a bit and if it looks helpful (particularly the forum posting scenario) I'll likely expand the forum posting option to all forums.

With this this being a score based captcha, it wont ask you to a solve something. It should just block you if it thinks you are a bot, based on a score it returns. For the moment, I have the score threshold rather low, to minimize the chances of it thinking you are a bot if you are not a bot. The last thing I want to do is block real people, so it might take some experimenting over time to see where we need to dial it in. If you have experience with this sort of thing, I'd love to hear from you if you have any recommendations on any specific settings. If it is blocking you and you are indeed a human, I also want to hear from you, so I can fix that!! Bare with me as we dial it in....

Fingers Crossed!!

Let me know how it goes!
Thanks!
Cheers!

Kyle...

[FuzzySideDown]

For those keeping score at home, I found this interesting. Heh. After roughly a half a day of the new captcha settings, there is a little bit of reporting data available. And it’s showing roughly 25-30% of the captcha requests were considered “very suspicious”. LOL! . Holy cow.

World…. Can we meet over here in the corner for a moment for a quick chat? Why? That’s really all I have… Why? Just think of all the good things you could accomplish if you put your energy toward good instead of evil. Soooo…. Just do good world, just do good.

So anyway…. Back to our regularly scheduled programming….

I’ll update again as I know more. Also, please feel free to mention your experiences as well, good or bad, with respect to whether the new captcha is either helping or hindering you.

Thanks gang!

Cheers!
Kyle.

[paul]

I am not a robot!

[FuzzySideDown]

[FuzzySideDown]

Hey gang.... Just wanted to give a bit of an update on the addition of the reCaptcha in an effort to cut down on spam...

Generally speaking, I think it's, helping.... There was so much spam coming through the "contact us" form link at the bottom of the site, that it rendered that email useless. Not a single bot email has come through since adding reCaptcha, knock on wood, which is fantastic! So I'm hoping it is having similar results on user registrations while hopefully not blocking real people.

davidwayne helped point out an issue with the new reCaptcha implementation when it was added to forum posts and private message submission. Thanks for that David! If you hit "Preview" before hitting "Submit", it would often fail the captcha with the following response.

"The solution you provided was incorrect"

The work around for that is to just hit submit a second time and it should go through.

This looks a bit like it might be a bug in either the Captcha+ plugin or in phpBB itself perhaps. I mentioned it to the Captcha+ developer and he was going to check into it. But yea, for now, I turned off the reCaptcha setting on forum posts, but will hopefully be able to turn it back on before too long. In the mean time, it's still turned on for user registration, so it should still be helping there.

If you have any issues with it or anything else, please let me know.

Thanks!
Cheers!

Kyle....

[FuzzySideDown]

Hey gang.... Time for the morning Captcha update....

The code fix for the CAPTCHA+ extension has been deployed. And it looks to have resolved the "preview" bug when posting or sending a PM. Big thanks to DavidIQ over at phpBB's Customization Team for the fix. I turned the captcha requirement back on for registered users when posting in General Glacier Discussion, and Non Park Related Topics. Provided you are a human, you shouldn't notice any sort of speed bump at all.... Big thanks to Paul for confirming he is indeed not a robot. I did actually laugh out loud at that... heh

After having it turned on for those 2 forums for a while with no issues, we'll turn it on for all of them. If you notice any issues, please let me know.

I feel like this should make a noticeable difference from before. It's already making a very noticeable difference in the Contact US form. Holy cow! Which, by the way, there's now a link to the Contact Us form in the Main Menu way up at the top, should you need it...

Thanks!
Cheers!
Kyle...

[DuskRanger]

I had no trouble with the new Captcha. It verified that I’m not a robot.

[FuzzySideDown]

Ahh right on. Thanks DuskRanger. Welcome to Glacier Park Chat!!

Cheers!
Kyle