CAPTCHA upgrade completed

[borisattva]

We are now up to date with the updates pertaining to registrations.
The hope is that the newer system will prevent automated spam registrants.
With this in mind i have once again re-enabled self activation.

Thanks for your patience and participation.

[borisattva]

seemingly outstanding immediate success in spam registration prevention turned out to be a dud.

In the days following the upgrade something was broken in the CAPTCHA method and the verification image was no longer being displayed. the spam bots could not get in - which was good. our fellow riders could not get in either - which was bad.

Today i have gone through 4 various methods, and settled on peoplesign:)

Essentially, instead of having you figure out what words the sguigly lines were meant to be on the screen, it asks you to match the images on the screen, and click on each corresponding image.
If you are curious to see what it looks like, log out, and go through the register link.

If you were wondering how exactly was it that we got hit with so many spams in the recent months, check out this article:
Google reCAPTCHA cracked

Also, it will never be possible to fully automate spammer prevention thanks to businesses like these:
decaptcher
who actually hire human operators to correctly respond to the verification processes aimed at fooling spambots.

Here's to hoping the new method works.