Discovery Gaming Community

The following may or may not be possible, logical, or making any sense whatsoever

Righto. It'll take me a huge wall of text to explain this to people without any knowledge of websites, but I'll try my best to still keep it mildly understandable.:P

What you need to do
Okay. I've worked with invisionfree (think free version of Invision Power Board, which is what this site is using) as an administrator myself, and I don't remember this being possible due to lack of FTP (file management) access. Still, seeing as this is the paid version, persuasion-of-staff/Do-it-yourself (You got FTP access?) ftw?

Moving on...

There is a phpBB3 (Yes, I personally think PHPBB3 > Invision Power Board) hack (mod) going like this...

Quote: #
#-----[ OPEN ]------------------------------------------
#
includes/ucp/ucp_register.php

#
#-----[ FIND ]------------------------------------------
#

$data = array(
'username' => utf8_normalize_nfc(request_var('username', '', true)),
'new_password' => request_var('new_password', '', true),
'password_confirm' => request_var('password_confirm', '', true),
'email' => strtolower(request_var('email', '')),
'email_confirm' => strtolower(request_var('email_confirm', '')),
'confirm_code' => request_var('confirm_code', ''),
'lang' => basename(request_var('lang', $user->lang_name)),
'tz' => request_var('tz', (float) $timezone),
);

#
#----[ AFTER, ADD ]------------------------------------------
#

if ($data['tz'] == -12.00)
{
die('Die, bot! Die.');
}

#
#-----[ SAVE/CLOSE ALL FILES ]------------------------------------------
#
# EoM

Obviously, this is impossible to do the same way in Invision Power Board, as the two types of forums differ too much. Basically,

Is it possible to block registrations from a specific time zone?

...Or to persuade the local maintenance team to do so for you?

The point
I can be very brief about this...if you block registrations from timezone GMT -12, any and all spambots should be blocked. Spambots are programmed to pick the first choice of any question in the registration page, meaning they'll choose GMT -12 AKA UTC -12.

I quote Wikipedia:

Quote:UTC−12 is a nautical time zone comprising the high seas between 180 and 17230′W longitude. Subtract twelve hours from Coordinated Universal Time to obtain the time for this zone. Ships using this time are the last to begin each calendar day. No human habitations are in this time zone. Uninhabited Baker Island and Howland Island are the only landmasses in this time zone.

Now, before you start going "Too good to be true, unlikely to work, restricting" etc, it's your forum 'course and I'll respect your decision. Still, I use it at my own gaming clan's forum and It works perfectly, zero complaints, 100% of all spambots gone. Worth a try, no?:P

Now, before you start going "OMG OMG MUST WORSHIP CAELUM!!!11" (not that you shouldn't)

Is this possible?




Just trying to help:P
~Caelum

Interesting!

I'd say that it warrants some investigation, if nothing else.

Well, you see, there's a question on the reg page that requires to input "Yes" without any dropdown menus, and some spambots still make it through. The timezone will hardly help this. We tried similar things before.

Can we add a simple question like " 2+5 = ? ". Spam bots usually can't answer such question I believe when filling for a registration.

True Igiss. Then again, I used to have a (GD) CAPTCHA on my own forum, no dropdown box either, spambots making it through too. I'm also very much aware of things like "Are you a spambot" "What is 2+5" "What is the opposite of hot" etc questions, but, for some reason they didn't work for 100%, whereas in my personal experience, this one did.

I'd still say it's worth a try if not too much trouble, but yeah, your choice;)
From personal experience I'd say it should help, but if you've tried similar things in the past...*shrugs* fair enough.

-Caelum