Author Topic: Does anyone use the standard avatars? Spambot avatar suggestions welcomed  (Read 6009 times)

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Offline suicidal_orange

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Whenever a spambot signs up and posts something innocuous (usually in an old thread) to edit later they have an avatar of a person and on closer inspection it's a 'famous' person from the list of standard avatars which have nothing to do with keyboards.

This made me wonder - does anyone actually use these avatars?  I can't see why you would want to pretend to be someone 'famous' but I may well be weird as with most other social norms.

If nobody uses them I propose we change all the pics to something only a bot would pick to make them easy to recognise.  If you're bored and have a suggestion for the 'spambot' avatar please post it to bump this thread.
120/100g linear Zealio R1  
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MX Clear
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EasyAVR mod

Offline blondie

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Wait, despite all of the hoops we have to go through to post, the spam bots still make it through? They know the answers to those questions? Maybe we should change the questions. And I can't believe they can read the captcha. I can hardly read that mess.

How about we change them all to pictures of prepackaged meats?

Offline suicidal_orange

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Wait, despite all of the hoops we have to go through to post, the spam bots still make it through? They know the answers to those questions? Maybe we should change the questions. And I can't believe they can read the captcha. I can hardly read that mess.

How about we change them all to pictures of prepackaged meats?
Oh yes, it's rare a day goes by that I don't find one and I'm not even online much. This post is probably one...  Post removed as it was indeed spam.

Meats is an interesting suggestion, there are a lot of avatars listed though so could be a lot of work resizing one for each
« Last Edit: Fri, 07 May 2021, 20:07:17 by suicidal_orange »
120/100g linear Zealio R1  
GMK Hyperfuse
'Split everything' perfection  
MX Clear
SA Hack'd by Geeks     
EasyAVR mod

Offline HoffmanMyster

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Wait, despite all of the hoops we have to go through to post, the spam bots still make it through? They know the answers to those questions? Maybe we should change the questions.

Yep, based on what I've read on various SMF forums, it's a game of cat and mouse. Once they have the answers in their database, the security feature is defeated for that particular spam-farm. Ideally we would have many more questions and only show each user 2-3, thereby extending the life of the questions. If anyone has any suggestions for questions, please let us/me know!!

And I can't believe they can read the captcha. I can hardly read that mess.

Yeah, that one's frustrating too. I tried using the next level captcha from where we are now, and the user response was rightfully quite negative. It gets really hard to interpret. These sorts of captchas are known to be relatively easy to defeat now, so it's a losing battle. :-/ Still can't quite justify getting rid of it entirely though.

Offline jamster

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Comedy avatars would be most welcome.