Required Registration Question

[teller55]

Hey all!

I was wondering if anyone knew how to add a registration question to a phpBB forum?

For Example:
During account registration, one of the fields to be filled in would ask: "What is the capital of Wisconsin?" and the user would have to answer "Madison" etc. If the answer is incorrect, they would fail to register.

Basically this is an anti-bot measure.

If possible, I would like it to cycle questions, so if the bot tried multiple times to register, they may get a different question each time (assuming I write enough questions.)

Any more info anyone needs let me know!

Thanks in advance!

[Palsgraf]

Why not use CAPTCHA? http://www.google.com/recaptcha/whyrecaptcha

[teller55]

Is this it? I have this already:


I would still like the question in addition though.

[Palsgraf]

That's a pretty easy code to break. As the link I posted says, most CAPTCHA implementations can be broken by machines. This version (owned by Google, no less) is much more secure. I say we switch to reCAPTCHA (http://www.google.com/recaptcha/whyrecaptcha).

As for the question, I do not think that will stop machine registration. Believe it or not, but these auto-registering bots are powerful enough to recognize what is being asked of it and look up the information. It may not get it right every time, but it gets it right enough.

At the moment, only the limits of image recognition stops a machine from signing up spam accounts. Hence, why an advanced CAPTCHA works so well. I'm sure in the near future even this implementation will be broken -- but for now it's secure.

[teller55]

FYI, I'm not talking about the ENT Forums, I'm pretty sure uak already uses reCAPTCHA.

Also, it would be Swat related questions, so it's not something a bot could really lookup.

[uakf.b]

phpBB natively supports exactly what you want. Go to ACP, Spambot countermeasures, select Q&A from installed plugins, and then hit configure. Then after you're done configuring, make sure to Submit on the spambot countermeasures page to update the plugin to use.

[teller55]

Alright, so....Forumotion (where I have my forum hosted because I'm cheap) doesn't have that option accessible. I'm trying to get them to make it so I can access that function, but it seems as though they don't have it set up 0.o

So unless you know of any other ways offhand to do this, I may not be able to :/

[Virulence]

What version of phpbb is the site using?

I saw an image-based captcha that requires them to assemble/rotate/identify 3 images somewhere that's pretty nifty.

For that third example, I'm talking about having the captcha instruct the person to click on a specific picture (like identify a boat) out of 6 possible picture thumbnails, then repeat it for another 2 times.

[teller55]

Yeah, the issue is because it's a free forum hosting service or w/e they control most of it, I don't think I can even do any custom mods or add-on's.

I created a required profile field asking the question that I wanted and then turned on "Activation by Admin" (aka I have to approve any new accounts being added) Luckily it's a small forum just for my Swat buddies and I and only 30 users (only like 4 active) so it shouldn't be too big of a deal with me approving new accounts. It just would have been nice of them not to have blocked it -.-

(phpbb3 No public version number because they custom everything about it annoyingly)