UFO:Alien Invasion
General => Discussion => Topic started by: Duke on December 08, 2013, 02:27:54 am
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A week ago, I successfully blocked the spambot registrations by changing the registration question.
But we also saw no new human member register during that week. So my concern is that the question might be too hard for the average user.
What I want you to do is
1. Lean back and remember the situation when you arrived here.
a) you followed the forums for days/months/years, then wanted to write your first reply to a post
b) you ignored the forums, but then wanted to post a support request
c) ... ?
...so you had to register.
2. Figure out the answer to our registration question. No need to actually register a fake account or such.
3. Post your success below, saying something like "Found it. But it took me 15 minutes." or "No clue. Gave up after 1 hour". Do NOT post the answer here !
Got the picture ? Ok, here we go. The registration question is:
What is the name of Duke's latest girfriend ?
Have fun ;)
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Okay.. all in less then 2 mins :P
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It took me... less than one second, the answer stood out enough that I would remember it immediately :)
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Well I'm going to answer this like any new user would. "Who the heck is Duke?" or "How am I supposed to know what his girlfriend's name is?".
Seriously I haven't the foggiest idea of an idea of what the answer could be.
I would change the question to something related to the game or maybe add a mail you get a month or so into the game that gives you the answer.
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Several minutes.
There aren't many mentions of girlfriends on game-related forum, you know.
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We even have a question on facebook about this ;)
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I was stumped for a while and then thought, it must be mentioned somewhere on the forums... and a search produced a result.
However, a new user might not think to search the forums and someone who's first language isn't English might not understand the results returned, or might not know what term to search on... and then there are typo issues etc.
I'm not sure it's such a brilliant idea. I'm with Eegxeta and say it should probably relate to the game, but the problem I see with that is what if someone is having problems starting the game and is creating an account to get some help. They likely would not know the answer to many possible game related questions.
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Instant.
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Duke you should design the website to snare spambots into a trap that makes them try to calculate the last number of pi. If you find something that the spam bots do automatically then use that as the snare and give a work around that is not too complex, but has a factor the spam bots can't account for. Like if they automatically activate the account as soon as they can then make it so you have to wait a day before activating the account otherwise it sends them to a page that make them try and calculate the last number of pi to continue. That would annoy the heck out of the people running the spam bot and they would move on because it is too much work. Or you could spam the spam bots make them download tons of junk data or well you get the idea. Make a trap that spam bots won't see.
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>> but has a factor the spam bots can't account for
Sadly, no such factor exists. Spambots are cleverer than you think, and if it comes to it, there's always Mturk
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Took me quite some time.
And if someone in this thread hadn't stated it can be found on this forum I'd never have figured it out.
(This is a gaming forum-->Duke must be "Duke Nukem"....)
Have you thought about adding a textfile to the game download that includes the answer to the security question?- I'd think spambots wouldn't want to download almost a gig of data?
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Gave up quickly because of trying to get into a mindframe of a player who just arrived here to talk a bit about the game. The answer can be found, but - explanation as follows:
The problem with the question is that many new users, especially those who just discovered the game and have little of knowledge (or care) for people surrounding it's development and community quite probably won't feel like being arsed into checking out which/what Duke is meant and then seek answer.
Some may have vague idea about development team, and be grateful to them for their work, but their former knowledge, experienced etc may make it hard for them to actually understand the question properly (I also, for a couple of seconds, just thought of and tried to recall character of Duke Nukem series).
Majority of the users, while they develop contacts over time, start simply as people who want to share something/ask/talk about the game they've started playing. Thus, I'd say that the question is quite unfitting, even if effective for stopping bots as it's not tailored for them and their knowledge. Ideally, it should be something most players of the game will get to know without need for searching around for the answer.
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Have you thought about adding a textfile to the game download that includes the answer to the security question?- I'd think spambots wouldn't want to download almost a gig of data?
That's an interesting point. Maybe have a message on the loading/main menu screen, somewhere that doesn't require searching, but small so as to be unobtrusive.
That would make it harder to change if necessary as not everyone would have the same version of the game, etc
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The registration question is:
What is the name of Duke's latest girfriend ?
I have no fucking clue. What am I missing here?
Have any new forum registrants been able to get passed this besides your girlfriend? :P
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Okay the above was worded too harshly and I understand what an endless mess spam creates on forums. So I apologize.
I am just concerned that such an unorthodox screening mechanism as this will block many would-have-been future contributors to this game.
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Many spam bot create first post with links to another resource. for my friends forum (phpbb) i write very simple script - automatically block user if founded links in first post. This stopped bots.
p.s. for registering in this forum i kill some time :(, forum search found this post and repeat search searched in current forum tree. post about girlfriend founded only after start search from root forum directory.
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@Flying Steel: np :)
As it stands, we have 4 new human users in 3 weeks and NO spam registrations. ==> this solution works.
Thanks for all the good ideas, but after all, we are not here to find the most sophisticated solution against spambots. We want to fix some ufoai bugs, right ?
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New user here. Took me about 5 minutes to find the password. No problem!
Nowwwwww, my suggestion for this game is: let us play the campaign as the Aliens and kick some human ass.
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Nowwwwww, my suggestion for this game is: let us play the campaign as the Aliens and kick some human ass.
It was suggested already, and might happen once... but not anytime in the near or mid future. That would basically mean of implementing a whole new campaign. In the current one the mechanics are not developed in too much depth for the aliens. Some events are just semi-random, their resources are "infinite" and so. So it is not just about switching sides...
-geever
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As both a human and a new forum member, I can say with one hundred percent certainty that I would have never been able to answer the question without this thread. Seeing as it's at the top of the Discussion subforum and I read it out of curiosity, though, I suppose you could just consider it another way for humans to get in that a bot wouldn't understand.
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Hi everyone! I've just registered to see if the name I found was the right one.
Love and kisses,
Anti-captcha Mecha-Robot
PS.: You only have a small hangar? Enlarge your bases! Order your Large Hangar now! http://goo.gl/i4NUmo :D
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It took me several minutes, as searching Duke girlfriend in the search bar didn't return any result (Duke is also java-related, found the answer manualy). And a few more minute because the captcha is barely readable for a regular Human ;D It think it must have chilled out more than one regular user.
The best anti-captcha I have tested (not so much) is to have a few random questions like the girlfriend question but easier to answer, like What the A of UFO AI stands for, what is the third word of this sentence, what is the name of the alien fighting organization, on which planet the game starts, which star gives us light during the day. Once a while a Human registers all the answers and some spam bot starts showing again, time to change the questions.
But I tested it on small forums. This one seems much more referenced and it may require to change the questions more frequently than once or twice a year.
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Hi,
I just registered and stumbled upon that question. The hint helps I think ... But also I lurked for long enough in this forum to read this thread.
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Kind of a pain to register. And the engine won't accept "His right hand" for the girlfriend question.
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No problem for me, just 1 false try since I tried to register before reading anything in the forum ( many forums do not allow this) The only point to check is that the coresponding thread remains high enough to be easily found: maybe mark it as sticky ?
And BTW, how can we trust anybody to defend us from alien invasion if unable to solve this introductory puzzle :)
A completely newbie, just wanting to give UFOAI a try but unable to fire on the enemy I've located in skirmish mode ( Is this the second test ? )
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Whew! Took me ~45 min and almost gave up. Then I realized that Google's famed semantic search fails miserably ??? to identify synonyms for “girlfriend†and decided browse the forum the dumb way. *hint*
So, +1 on making the answer to the question visible inside the game. Or in the README, so that someone who can't even start it can ask for help. Go figure if spamlings are dedicated enough to download the game for the answer.
See you in the forum & bug tracker!
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I came here recently as a new user (great game, by the way) and would imagine my experience was much the same as many new users.
1) I did not create an account until I had my first suggestion for a new feature occur to me, prompting me to want to join the forum.
2) It took me approx 15 minutes to find the answer. My only annoyance was hunting for which of the many categories within the forum to search through for your easter egg.
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OK, here's my own take on the subject:
- I've already been registered in the forum (for years now...) so I didn't have to go through this new system, but I'm glad because I myself had a lot of trouble finding the answer to the question and could certainly imagine how much a pain in the a** it must be for new people who want to join.
- I would suggest, as mentioned already, having a question that has an answer in the download for the game, and *not* posted *anywhere* in the forum. I don't know of any spam bot that could download the whole game and then extract the answer.
- I would also suggest having the answer in some quick-start or game manual that comes with the download, and *not* require actually starting the game, for the exact same reason already mentioned in the thread - In case someone has trouble starting the game and needs support in the first place.
- The answer to the question should not be a real name (of any person) or real word, because some spam-bots can still guess different random names and/or words, in some cases based upon an "educated guess" from other content and the language used on the website.
- The answer to such a challenge question should be provided in a image format in the download, not necessarily as hard to read as some captcha images, but just enough that a bot scanning downloadable files for the project wouldn't be able to easily scan and extract what they think might be the answer.
- Having a simple PDF or HTML quick-start guide included in the game download with the answer in an image would be very easy, it could be in a FAQ or part of the guide that tells how to join the community or ask for support in the forum. Putting together such a guide would be very easy (If no one else volunteers, I'll do this part myself, I don't think it'll take long.)
- As a *secondary* measure, the answer to the question should be mentioned in the actual game main menu or somewhere when the player checks a help screen for support. Either that or it could tell the player where to look to find it (such as "Please read the Quick-Start guide included in the game download for the answer to access the forum, under 'Support Options' or 'Getting involved in the game community'").
- I think something along these ideas would be reasonable, not be too much to expect of newcomers, and would be effective for fighting bots.
Many spam bot create first post with links to another resource. for my friends forum (phpbb) i write very simple script - automatically block user if founded links in first post. This stopped bots.
This is also a very good point, and not a bad idea IMO. I would offer to do this part myself as well, except that I don't have the expertise for writing such a script, I only know how to code in primarily just C/C++, some Java, HTML, and Reaper JS script (mostly, I'm still learning Python and a few others).
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This will just make people starting to complain about the need to download the game just for registering. And what about people playing older versions? Also, no way to change the password later on - once it is out in a release version of the game it´will basically be locked forever.
Sometimes I feel like laughing to dead about this topic. Doing a search about the keyword brings the answer up in the very first line. So what?
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I just registered. Ridiculously hard. If the topic where it's mentioned had disappeared among the older ones I for sure would've had no chance.
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why not use a keyword, and the question random shuffle questions like, whats the 1st, 3rd and 4th letter of word ........ etc
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why not use a keyword, and the question random shuffle questions like, whats the 1st, 3rd and 4th letter of word ........ etc
Because SMF cannot do that...
-geever
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A thread from November 30, 2013? That's crazy! But you don't care, do you? Is it fun?
I created a pastebin account just for you...
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A thread from November 30, 2013? That's crazy! But you don't care, do you? Is it fun?
I created a pastebin account just for you...
And you made an acc just for posting this?