cutting down on spammers

[Lance Dean]

Well guys, you may not know it but this forum was receiving up to 10 spam new registrations a day!  I had to turn new user registration off for a while until I could come up with a new solution, AND have the time to install it. 

I finally got a new spammer control installed tonight.  Hopefully this will cut down on spam registrations, and allow the legitimate new users register.

If you see anything funny going on, or if someone tells you they have trouble, let me know, please.

All this takes time to sort through.  Thanks for your patience and please continue to take part here.

[Earl]

Lance, from some of my experience on other boards (and running one myself for a short while), you'll always get some spam registrations - they're devious little bastards, and they've refined their "skills" to be very effective on infiltrating forums within hours of a forum software update. That said, there ARE ways to short-circuit their process. CAPTCHA is a good way, but the way I found best was CAPTCHA followed by an automatic email to which they MUST reply before they can post; this doesn't eliminate the registration, but it DOES keep the bot from spamming the board. Three or four minutes before reviewing posts was all it took me to check the member lists and delete the spam accounts which never got further than the registration process, and it kept my board clean.

Good luck - this Age of Information we're in is fraught with unethical opportunists who are good at what they do; best we can hope for sometimes is just to maintain parity.

[Lance Dean]

Just since installing the fix, 24 spammers have been stopped from registering and 0 have gotten through.  I like it! 

[Earl]

That's a kill ratio we can all live with.

[BrokenArrowtiger]

Hey lance.. good job with what your doing iv been on forums for the past 5 o 6 years and iv had my fair share of spammers as well. But i can honestly say this is probley the safest forum iv seen ina long time. .. Now earl you  said something about captcha? While i do agree with you that is a good a solution.. their is a big downside to it.. When people do registire they have to present a code to captcha.. verification stuff... sometimes that can get a lil annoying .but otherwise it is good to use.  And lance alot of forum companys do have captcha built in to the registration of users.

[Lance Dean]

I have always hated CAPTCHA for how difficult it can be to read.  Especially for those of us who can't see too well anymore.

If this new system works as well as it appears, I'll probably back the CAPTCHA complexity back down to a basic level.  It wasn't slowing spammers down at the most complex level anyway.

And, I can always manually register new members for them at their request.  Although I'd rather them do it for themselves.

Quick note, I can't see your passwords.  So if you ever lose your password, I can manually RESET it to anything you choose.  I can't give you your current password though.  Peace of mind.

[BrokenArrowtiger]

Your not the only one whos hates Captcha trust me. even for a yougin like me i have trouble reading it..And their is a way to sorta elimate having to use your password or even remeber it..when you log theirs a thing that says how long you want to be logged in for..and you can chose w/e you want but i just put mine at "forever" It works

[Earl]

I don't know anyone who likes CAPTCHA, since it is so darned difficult to read sometimes; the spambots are also becoming more successful in bypassing/overcoming it, to boot. It's sort of the TSA of the forum world. That said, it does beat back the less sophisticated bots, which avoids ther level of nonsense, and when you throw in an automated email activation, it tends to reduce even the sophisticated bots to a few lines of gibberish in your Members DB.

How's the numbers so far, Lance? Any weeds get through yet?

[Lance Dean]

2 have gotten through so far out of 150+ attempts.  Pretty good!  Maybe it will hold up.  I just hope the legit people will be able to get through.

[Lance Dean]

This is the database of names/email addresses/IP addresses that this forum registration checks out new members with:

http://www.stopforumspam.com/

[Earl]

Nice work they're doing - if I ever do create another forum, that'll be a resource for sure.

2 out of 150 - not bad at all. Did those 2 ever get to post anything, or were they defeated somewhere else after making it through registration?

[BrokenArrowtiger]

Thanks lance for putting the site up. I will have to put that on my groups forums. Honestly..i think the sapmmers and the virus people are more..ehhm knowlegible in computers then some of the computer programmers are.

[Lance Dean]

Nice work they're doing - if I ever do create another forum, that'll be a resource for sure.

2 out of 150 - not bad at all. Did those 2 ever get to post anything, or were they defeated somewhere else after making it through registration?

I have this forum set to Admin Approval.  So I have to manually approve each new registration before they can ever log in.  I have to examine each one to see if they look legit to me or not.  Sometimes it's hard to tell, but most of the time it's easy.  This just keeps me from being bombarded with new members to examine.