scammers again

[creativepart]

We still have an issue with scammers in our Classifieds. Making it worse, at least one of our members has lost a lot of money to the scammers. So, they are determined to come back over and over again. They register because they can't contact sellers without registering.

I asked about this here a while ago and you said that you'd add a Captcha setting to the usergroup setting for sending emails from the Contact Seller link in the ads.

I just completed a test install of 5.22 on my DEV forum and I've set it up to require Captcha for everyone. But in my tests there is no captcha routine coming up when I "contact seller" using email.

Is there some other setting I'm missing?

Thanks

[Chuck S]

Well scammers are everywhere on the net and there is no fool proof way to stop them.

I run a vbulletin 4.20 site and have the realtime captcha they provide enabled and I still see scammers on my site in my forum and have posts to delete almost every couple days.

Now with that said our latest code which has been out awhile is 5.23 and indeed there is captcha if you have all the proper files installed and have captcha turned on.

I checked my site and its definately there

Contact Form - Reeftalk Classifieds

Now with that said there are two things to do to turn on captcha

1. You need to have the global permission under registration options turned on for captcha

2. You can refine permissions under edit usergroups option in admin for which groups have to have captcha. Meaning if your checking your link logged in as admin and you do not require captcha then you would not see captcha.

So really it is all up to how you have it set. You need to also realize that there are scammers out there that are not just bots but real human beings so if it be a bot that is designed to break through captcha or a human that can read and answer the captcha then they are going to be able to post.

[creativepart]

Chuck, so even with a VB install of PPclassifieds I have to turn on captcha in the registration options, even though it's unused?

And, I realize about scammers.

We think our scammers are running software bots to pickup info in the Classifieds database and email every user at once. We're seeing 200 emails going out enmasse. They are using database fields to fill out the email, too. They pickup the title of the ad and use it multiple times in the emails they send.

[creativepart]

OK, I turned on Captcha in the Registration options and that did the trick.

Thanks, we'll see if this helps.

[Chuck S]

Yep not a problem glad to help. It should help I am just pointing out nothing is foolproof.

[creativepart]

Don't I know it. But... any port in a storm.

[Chuck S]

Not a problem let me know if you need help with anything else.