Spammers....

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Jupiter
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Spammers....

Post by Jupiter »

In the last few months, we have been having more problems with spammers registering on the message board. They do this so they can show up on search engines in as many places as possible. Unfortunately, there is not a lot we can do about it right now. We can stop the robotic spammer pretty well, but it's next to imposible to stop the human spammers. We have slowed them down by requiring users to activate their account with a valid email address. Usually the spammers fail to activate their account and I usually just delete them...

I can't watch this place all day long. So the spammers will get through. If you notice any spamming, please let me know about it via a PM or email and I will take care of it as soon as I can.
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Buzzygirl
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Post by Buzzygirl »

What do you think about requiring anyone who wants to sign up for MAS forum access to enter a code before submitting their e-mail addresses?

I have noticed a lot more web forums are requiring this, as it almost completely keeps spammers off the boards-- many, if not most spammers run scripts to automatically sign themselves up to forums. Having to add a randomly-generated code before submitting an e-mail address for registration would keep the autoscripts from having access to the forums for spamming purposes. I don't know how this would work with guest access though.

Just a suggestion.
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kibatme
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Post by kibatme »

Buzzygirl wrote:What do you think about requiring anyone who wants to sign up for MAS forum access to enter a code before submitting their e-mail addresses?
I'll need to check that it's still active, but Craig had installed just such a feature a while back.
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Jupiter
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Post by Jupiter »

Yes... That feature is installed, but it still can't stop the spammers.

The robotic registrations have special software that can actually read the hidden code.... Plus, it's impossible to stop a human from registering and spamming. We could go back to having the admins activate accounts, but that is a real pain.
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Jupiter
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Post by Jupiter »

The spammers are still coming..... I am deleting 1-4 of them every day it seems like. So I have turned the account activation back to the admin for now. Instead of Mike being inundated with activation emails, I have created a special account on my own family site that we can use for now. If someone wants to take this over, that's fine.... But I have no problem doing this for now.

The admin email for now is this:

mas at cotnerfamily.com


The "@"was left out on purpose.
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Jupiter
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Post by Jupiter »

Well.... This did not work like I thought it would.

The activation emails don't go to the Admin email account designated in the messge board configuration. It gets sent to anyone who is an ADMIN. So the email are still going to Mike since he is an admin... So I need to keep working on a solution.


I could upgrade the board with a MOD like I have on my message board. My site is very popular, yet has never once been hit by a spammer... I just don't know if I want to complicate the software anymore than it already is.
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Jupiter
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Post by Jupiter »

If you are an Admin and are now getting activation emails, please DO NOT click the link in the email. By doing this, you activate the account.

There is an "Inactive Users" list in the administration panel of the site. This is where you can activate or delete new users. If you don't know how to use it, just leave it alone. I check it just about every day, so I can take care of everything. All I care about is that we have stopped spammers from posting.
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rbubany
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Post by rbubany »

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Or, I might be stuck next to the band....
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