Quote Originally Posted by MGCJerry View Post
Its not so much of the forum software, but the powerful software available to spammers and crackers. With the cashflow available to these people who do this stuff there is a large array of applications that can register and "participate" on about any forum.

These applications can read captcha images, fill out only "required" info (by reading the page) and even "test posting" their spam message is specific forums (by reading the page). As well as other configruable options.

However, a simple text string or image asking the user to solve a simple logical problem will stop these things in their tracks (at least for now)...

Heres the preliminary anti-bot captcha system I'm working on until I get the "real deal" coded.
http://mgcjerry.net/captcha.html
Yea, vBulletin has a mod that works like this and I have used it on a number of my sites as well - it has worked 100% for me. It's called NoSpam! -- if you have a vbulletin.org account you can find it here...

Mods > vBulletin 3.6 Add-ons... Then sort by # of installs - it's the 12th one down

Like I said, it has worked very well for me. In the admin you get to word a question (anything) and determine the answer. Because everyone will generally do something different, the spam bots can not be automated to fill out an answer for the field. You can do things as simple as "type out the word 4 below" and then in the answer field type all the combinations you would like to be accepted ("four" in the case, or maybe even "for" for people who... can't spell).

Anyway, it's an idea - free plugin, super easy to install.