'Spammers and anti-spam software'

Keter from the garage door -

Has anti-spam software changed the techniques of spammers at all? Surely their success rate at getting people to fall for spam has drastically dropped with the amount of anti-spam software that is routinely used by so many people today.

Comment #1 jnights from Watching my back -

Their techniques have evolved, sure. They are now using more of an automated approach such as bots on forums and have even managed to bypass some CAPTCHA image verification techniques which is incredible. Believe me, they are getting more advanced by the day. Many of those misspellings you see in e-mails are not due to poor English, but rather techniques to evade being detected.

Comment #2 Kings from parallel street -

Talking about CAPTCHA image verification techniques, is it easy to incorporate them into my forum? I am using phpBB software and would like to somehow stop the tremendous amount of spam that floods in through the built in contact form. If I could require a registration using CAPTCHA before people could submit on the forms it would help tremendously.

Comment #3 Conyngham from the windy city -

Surely by now the hackers must have developed a technique to circumvent image verification techniques? At the end of the day, any data displayed on your computer is reduced to the same digital output, and surely this can be analyzed by clever software?

Comment #4 Plums from the thrush tree -

I actually prefer sites that do use CAPTCHA techniques as it assures one of a sense of security behind the site, and is almost a guarantee that one won't be spammed after registering on such a site. Of course spammers could use reverse psychology to sucker one in, but I don't believe any site going to these lengths to protect themselves from spammers, could themselves be spammers!

Comment #5 George from Montana -

I see CAPTCHA as a method of punishing legitimate users in an attempt to control the "bad guys". This forum seems to have very little spam messages without CAPTCHA and I understand their anti spam system stops spam across some 40 forums with under 15 minutes a day of human intervention.

Just because the CAPTCHA image is twisted doesn't mean it isn't easily defeated by automated means.

Comment #6 Delino from California -

You're quite right. It's even worse when they twist and distort it so badly that you can't make out the characters. I've been on sites where I've had to refresh the page so many times I feel like not registering anymore.

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