Working on improving security...

[Rampagingraptor]

I never really thought of that, but with the advancement of technology, it only makes sense that they would find ways around captcha. I kinda want to see how they do it, though.
Honestly, I will probably need a refresher course on everything soon enough because of my own job.
Thanks for telling me all this, though! Also, thanks for maintaining the site, as it has been such a help to me and so many others!

 

[beardie]

I don't know if this is still a method used, but for a while it was really simple... Captcha "services" were provided to various sites (often porn or other high traffic sites). In reality, they were bots immediately proxying captchas from other sites and then relaying it through. They were essentially leveraging real people unknowingly submitting captcha from another site. The captcha proxy approach was pretty ingenious. Now, OCR is so good that it gets most of them. They probably have several tactics deployed. All of the common methods of scrambling things have been largely defeated... that or its so hard that humans couldn't use it (so people stopped using them).

 

[popsickle18]

Hey there I got a 403 error. Thank you for the effort to improve security!

 

[beardie]

The security checks didn't like some combination of words and characters that were in your post(s). They incorrectly thought it was a type of attack. I've disabled that particular detection for the forums, so it shouldn't get in your way again. If you do see the problem again, please let me know. It will likely then end up being a different security rule.

 

[CountofCasualty]

Got a 403 error trying to send a message today. IP is 174.7.77.157.

 

[beardie]

Security rules adjusted. Give it a try again. It was actually not IP specific, but some combination of words in your post that made it think that it was an attempt at a database hack. And from the content it identified, it was clearly a false positive.

Let me know if you have any further issues.

Cheers,
-Alex