MyBB Default Capatcha

[Justin]

There are various reasons not to use ReCaptcha: Local installations, privacy concerns, regulations (think of GDPR) or simply not being dependent on a 3rd party service.

While all of that is true, the fact is that the MyBB default CAPTCHA does not prevent spam registrations. It gives the appearance of security without actually providing any.

Case in point: the MyBB 1.9 demo was using the default MyBB CAPTCHA until I discovered a large number of spam registrations coming in. I switched to reCAPTCHA and the spam registrations stopped immediately.

[Eldenroot]

It is just a weak protection, recaptcha is much better

[andrewjs18]

There are various reasons not to use ReCaptcha: Local installations, privacy concerns, regulations (think of GDPR) or simply not being dependent on a 3rd party service.

While all of that is true, the fact is that the MyBB default CAPTCHA does not prevent spam registrations. It gives the appearance of security without actually providing any.

Case in point: the MyBB 1.9 demo was using the default MyBB CAPTCHA until I discovered a large number of spam registrations coming in. I switched to reCAPTCHA and the spam registrations stopped immediately.

plus, when was the last time mybb's captcha had any work done to it to prevent new spam measures?

if we can offload the work/services to a 3rd party, who regularly keeps their work updated - and the system that almost everyone already uses anyways - then why not do it?

[StefanT]

While all of that is true, the fact is that the MyBB default CAPTCHA does not prevent spam registrations. It gives the appearance of security without actually providing any.

It works well against simple bots not having OCR or similar strategies to solve verification images. Together with good security questions it can be very effective and user-friendly.

plus, when was the last time mybb's captcha had any work done to it to prevent new spam measures?

There is not much point in trying to do that.

if we can offload the work/services to a 3rd party, who regularly keeps their work updated - and the system that almost everyone already uses anyways - then why not do it?

Recaptcha can be very frustrating and sometimes difficult to understand for (unexperienced) users.

It absolutely makes sense to promote proper spam prevention techniques like Recaptcha or proper security questions (some admins keep the default question that doesn't provide any protection either) but a 3rd party service shouldn't be the only available option.

[Ben]

Hi,

Your feature suggestion has been accepted as a planned feature to be implemented in MyBB. Thanks for your contribution!