crossmr wrote: My site has been going along quite well for awhile. Registration requires admin approval, so bots aren't getting in to spam the site, the problem is that as of a couple weeks ago, my site must have ranked high enough to garner their attention. I get around a dozen spam sign-ups a day, not terrible to delete, but the problem is all the bounced and repeated emails I get from these sign ups. Starts to become annoying.

I added a captcha yesterday specifically this one: extensions.joomla.org/extensions/extension-specific/community-builder-extensions/community-builder-management/14751

and verified it's showing up on the registration page. The issue is, it's not working, the bots seem to be able to get around it. What else can I do to prevent bot sign-up?

crossmr wrote: I realize you guys are a business, but expensive plugins aren't the solution for me right now.

The question I have is this:
would the CB Captcha plugin work any different? You suggest it, but do you have any evidence to support that it would change what I'm seeing? Would bots still be able to get around the CB official one? I assume they're bots as the user names and emails they provide seem to be randomly generated.

Have bots been know to defeat recaptcha?

are there any other kind of anti spam measure that can be used for registration in the CB package?

crossmr wrote: Joomla 2.5.14
CB 1.9
They often sign up 4-5 times in one second a dozen times in a minute all with identical style usernames and email addresses following a pattern, also if it was a human, they'd realize that the site requires admin approval and they aren't getting through. Signing up is a waste of time.
Joomla registration is disabled, I don't have any other registration components on the site.