Spam

[Richard Clements]

It seems we have issues it might be worth setting the forum to manual authorise new joiners at least then it wil stop the obvious one's slipping through the net.

[47p2]

Rich,

I believe admin are on the case and hope to have it sorted very soon.

Such a shame that some morons try to disrupt genuine forums with the rubbish we have had over the weekend

Can I ask that members who do find spam on the forum to ensure you do not click on any of the links as these can often be full of potentially harmful viruses

[Forum Admin]

It is a pity that we have had an 'influx' of spam rubbish over the past few days.

I have deleted all the ones I can find so far and have banned them, also I have deleted over 900 inactive accounts that have been set up but then not activated and also the account has not visited the forum since it was set up.

If we have a repeat problem with spam/rubbish then we may have to change to the manual authorise system as suggested by Richard.

[Richard Clements]

Thanks for sorting that, it must have take a good hour to sort that little lot out, unfortunately it's a common problem with forums in general I know a few fora that have had similar problems in the past and ended up with the manual authorisation method.

[Forum Admin]

As of 6th June in an attempt to reduce the number of spam posts I have changed the registration pages. New members now have to :

1.Decipher a 'harder to read' jumbled key (This stops some spam bots)
2.An extra field now requires the new 'joiner' to answer a question which will be changed periodically
3.An account now only becomes active when the 'joiner' receives and replies to an email from the system requiring manual confirmation.

Let's see if things improve.

Paul

[Richard Clements]

I think you have done the right thing.

[richard moss]

Going by the dozens of new spam posts this morning, I think that the current registration process isn't working.

On my 800 forum we use manual activation - myself and one other admin take care of it. It's a bit of a pain but we have never had a spammer get through it.

We put up an announcement post telling people what's involved, explaining the problems and saying that we might accidentally delete a genuine applicant but that if that happens they should email us and we'll sort it out.

This is the text that we put up:

In common with just about every forum on the internet, we are constantly bombarded with spammers trying to register and advertise their various "products" on our forum.

In order to defeat these spammers we have to manually approve EVERY registration on this forum. We probably approve 1 genuine registration for every 6-10 spammers that we delete and occasionally we get it wrong and delete a genuine application. You can reduce the risk of being one of those who is accidentally denied access by doing the following:

1) Pick a sensible, recognisable, username. You may think that "viagra-boy", "road racer" or "crack-seller" are funny but we'll mark you down as spammers if you do!

2) Fill in your profile. If you don't, we may assume that you are a spammer. If you give us your location, some personal info, details of your car etc. then we stand a chance of seeing that you're genuine. The "INTERESTS" or "SIGNATURE" sections of the profile are good for this.

3) We're not infallible - there is a chance that we may mistakenly delete a genuine applicant. This will almost always be because they've not put enough personal info on to the registration form for us to be able to see that they are a genuine applicant. If this happens, send us an email and when we are happy that you're genuine we'll sort you out with membership

4) Be patient. EVERY single registration has to be approved or denied manually and whilst some of us spend much too much time on the forum, it may take a while to get around to you.

5) Please note gmail email addresses are banned as we have had many issues with spam registrations using them, any email that ends in @gmail.com will not work.

Thank you.

Hope that's of some use to you.

[Forum Admin]

Thanks Richard,

I have deleted the new spam, it actually came from 1 address that had registered before the changes of last week.

In fact checking the stats since last week when the registration pages were changed we haven't had any spam registrations at all which is very good considering we were getting up to 10 a day before, mostly creating inactive accounts.

I am still actively deleting accounts that appear to have registered but not posted or seem to come from dodgy ips or groups, must have missed this one.

In the near future I shall be upgrading the software to a later version one advantage of that is that the first post of a new member is held in a queue for moderation, after which , if passed, all further post will go ahead.

Paul

[richard moss]

I have deleted the new spam, it actually came from 1 address that had registered before the changes of last week.

That's not so bad then.

Damned nuisance, aren't they and I wonder what they think they can achieve? No-one in their right mind would buy from someone who advertises that way, so it can only really be that following the link gives them a chance to harvest personal info.