Since it is so widespread, I have to assume that there is money in it somehow. Like all the spam email you get every day..Might be identity theft or some other criminal enterprise or just unwanted advertising.
Most of the attacks we see are bots but sometimes real humans.
This is actually nothing to do with the forum software, we removed Captcha from that four years ago, and overnight the spam emails dropped from more than 20 each night to zero, and have remained at a minimum level ever since.
The Captcha is being presented by a service that sits between users and the servers and is intended to speed up access to our websites, whilst protecting them from attack. We are working on changing how this operates, as the nuisance value of it eating up the posts, is outweighing any benefit.
From my experience it seems to have resolved itself. A few weeks ago it was a regular nuisance. Must say it has been behaving lately or have I spoken too soon, tempted faith ? We will see !!!
When adding a file the PHP Error message is consistent and still occurs every time, pressing the preview tab is the work around, adds a minute or two to the task of constructing a post.
Certainly would not be a massive issue to those that have read this post and know how to get around it, may leave a new user discontented.
When you are faced with a Captcha, there is a 85% chance the post will go through as desired, but on the 15% of occassions when having passed the Captcha, the thing falls over or presents a blank and empty message box, don't panic, use the browse back button (of course if you used ctrl-c to copy the post before hand, then this does not apply) and magically in about 3-4 screens back (depending on the Captcha screw up) you'll be re-united with your post as it was just before you tried to submit it.
Now don't tempt fate, this time use Ctrl-a to select it all, Ctrl-c to copy it and re-try!
If on a GSM/3G/4G it might be worth disconnecting the session and reconnection (turn off mobile data, then back on again - it will generate a fresh IP address).
I've had some auto generated IP's that Captcha stead fast refuses to allow to post no matter how good my verification, but not recently.
STC wrote:I went back 4 Laptops, 3 Internet service providers, 2 Houses and 1 Partridge in a Pear Tree.
Somethings/perps are stuck in stone age!!
The back button works in Firefox on Windows, I think Chrome works too, not true IE or others
I think Safari on iPad, using the back button works to recover the post content too, but not 100% sure as stopped posting from tablets after loosing the content once too many times before I worked out the back button!!
I'll take the 3 old laptops, so long as they have a 9 pin serial and 25pin printer port
Otherwise the 1 Airbag ECU would be great sometime soon
if it was not for the back button saving me (firefox and chrome on PC's), I'd be really miffed, but this does not work on an iPad and twice on BT broadband, rather than my usual mobile hotspot I've completed the capcha correctly, it's said ok, and returned me to the start of my post, maybe the last preview if one was done.
So, there is something in the phpBB scripts that handle the response, not the Captcha site, that are throwing away the post and reverting to some previous variable. Please take a look at this, it can't be that hard to stick to one variable for the post contents and at worst save it as a draft prior to captcha (post any checks/injection protection etc).
I'd question the Captcha trigger logic , but I have already! This could be tweaked ... but I'll live with it for the great good and safety, if I must ... but ...
PLEASE sort the Variable/Data loss though as this is becoming tiresome in the EXTREME !!!