Membership Approval

[Dr Maturin]

Recently, we've had a lot of people posting advertisements and gimmicks. Perhaps this could be curbed by setting it up so that moderators have to approve accounts before new users may create posts.

[Jan]

A lot of the registrants that we suspect are spammers never even post, thank heavens. And Doug's taken some pre-emptive action, too.

All I would ask is that people don't reply to the spam. Ranger1 and I will eliminate it as soon as we see it. :D

Jan

[SmileOfTheShadow]

A lot of the registrants that we suspect are spammers never even post, thank heavens. And Doug's taken some pre-emptive action, too.

All I would ask is that people don't reply to the spam. Ranger1 and I will eliminate it as soon as we see it. :D

Jan


I've noticed we have a huuuuge amount of registered users who have never posted. I love the ones that actually have names like "PRODUCT ADVERTISEMENT"

Jon

[Satai Delenn]

That would be nice gets irritating to se ads or whatever.

[DougO]

Sometimes we can weed out the new spammer accounts based on user name or the email domain. Unfortunately many can't be spotted that easily and we don't find out until they post spam.

One idea I have is to flag new user accounts as always requiring moderation. That way, me or a moderator would have to approve a message before it was visible. After one or two on-topic posts I could promote the account to normal status. I need to look at the forum configuration and see what would be involved in a change like this.

I'm not sure if it would be more work to pre-screen new users or just delete spam and the associated user when it happens. It does seems like the rate of spam is on the rise.

Thanks,

-DougO

[AaronB]

Sometimes we can weed out the new spammer accounts based on user name or the email domain. Unfortunately many can't be spotted that easily and we don't find out until they post spam.

One idea I have is to flag new user accounts as always requiring moderation. That way, me or a moderator would have to approve a message before it was visible. After one or two on-topic posts I could promote the account to normal status. I need to look at the forum configuration and see what would be involved in a change like this.

I'm not sure if it would be more work to pre-screen new users or just delete spam and the associated user when it happens. It does seems like the rate of spam is on the rise.

Thanks,

-DougO
I have not gone through the sign up process a for a while and forget what goes into it but, would it help to have a word verification or a link that would get emailed and they have to click on the link to get final approval?

That and I think that a moderation period would be a good idea.

[DougO]

When a new user registers at the site they are sent an email with a link which they need to click on to complete the registration. I wish the registration process required the user to transcribe a obscured word in a bitmap as part of the process to break automated scripts. I bet that would cut down the number of spammers. Something like that might be available as an add-on...

-DougO

[Lunan]

look at Gallireyone.com the outpost does an amazing job of killing spammers off fast and not letting that many get thru and there seem to be alot more people who go there then there are that stop here (seems that way, but doctor who fans can get very um noticable at times)

[Dr Maturin]

We've curbed spam at The Pit by requiring membership approval. Do you do that here yet?

[DougO]

What criteria is used for approval?

-DougO

[Dr Maturin]

Don't know.

[DougO]

Right now we just have the email confirmation before an account is active. There is no human decision in the process. What we need is something that is automatic on our end but requires manual intervention on the spammer's part.

-DougO

[AaronB]

Right now we just have the email confirmation before an account is active. There is no human decision in the process. What we need is something that is automatic on our end but requires manual intervention on the spammer's part.

-DougO
Maybe something like a "word" verification system like they use for posting comments on blogger? Does v bulletin allow for plug-ins?

[Dr Maturin]

What about something that makes it so that you just have to click and approve new members? With names like "SAVE MONEY NOW" you can be pretty sure on definite spammers. Some will get through, but not as many.

[Jan]

If we could get such a thing, I agree that the word verification system theBaron suggested would be best.

Jan

[DougO]

Maybe something like a "word" verification system like they use for posting comments on blogger? Does v bulletin allow for plug-ins?
There are ways to add 3rd party features to vBulletin and I expect someone offers a "type in the squiggly letters" verification page. I'll check the vBulletin support forums and see if there are any recommendations.

-DougO

[Andrew_Swallow]

Or just ask a maths equation like
Three plus six equals

Accept nine and 9.

[DougO]

The latest version of vBulletin supports image verification where the user has to type in the numbers/letters seen in a bitmap. I think that feature will help reduce spam because it should block scripted creation of accounts. I'm going to try and schedule some time to perform the upgrade soon.

In December the spammers were very active and created about 800 new accounts here. Fortunately most of those were never used and are now deleted. Today I enabled a feature that will block user's from registering using email addresses from known spammer domains (e.g., cashette.com, mail.ru, etc). I banned over 100 domains which should make registering spam account more difficult.

-DougO

[AaronB]

Thanks Doug!

[Lunan]

The latest version of vBulletin supports image verification where the user has to type in the numbers/letters seen in a bitmap. I think that feature will help reduce spam because it should block scripted creation of accounts. I'm going to try and schedule some time to perform the upgrade soon.

In December the spammers were very active and created about 800 new accounts here. Fortunately most of those were never used and are now deleted. Today I enabled a feature that will block user's from registering using email addresses from known spammer domains (e.g., cashette.com, mail.ru, etc). I banned over 100 domains which should make registering spam account more difficult.

-DougO

keep up the good work but i'm afriad it dosn't seem to be working

[DougO]

I just deleted today's batch of spammers. The good news is that there were only about 10 new spammer accounts instead of the normal 20-30. Banning the use of popular spammer email domains may be helping.

I'm going to upgrade the forums soon (maybe tonight) to the latest version of vBulletin which includes image verification as part of the registration process. That will hopefully eliminate the spammers using scripts to register. Then we'll just have to deal with the remaining subset willing to manually register their accounts.

Upgrading the forums always makes me nervious. The upgrade process involves hitting "next" on a series of 30-50 HTML pages. Each page contains script that performs a step in the upgrade. If any of the pages encounters error then you're stuck and can't go on until you figure out what's wrong. Once you start the process you can't cancel short of restoring a backup of the site. I'm sure it will be okay... :)

-DougO

[Jan]

Once you start the process you can't cancel short of restoring a backup of the site. I'm sure it will be okay... :)

We have faith in you, Doug! No pressure.... ;)

Jan

[DougO]

The upgrade is complete. Please let me know if you run into any problem or have questions about anything that has changed. So far I haven't noticed much in the way of functional changes.

-DougO

[Jan]

Thanks, Doug!

Oh, and since I don't think I've said it lately, thank you VERY much for keeping this little corner of the 'net advertisement free!!! It's appreciated.

Jan

[vacantlook]

Oh, and since I don't think I've said it lately, thank you VERY much for keeping this little corner of the 'net advertisement free!!! It's appreciated.

Thanks from me too. Seeing no advertisements here makes this place feel clean and tidy!

[JohnFourtyTwo]

I noticed that my signature isn't showing up on my old posts when I didn't have a signature. Not a major problem at all, just wondering if that's because I didn't have a signature at first. It took me a while to get a good signature and didn't want to use the one I use on other boards.

[AaronB]

Doug, it looks like the upgrade did the trick. I don't remember seeing and spam in a while. Thanks for all of your effort.

[DougO]

Doug, it looks like the upgrade did the trick. I don't remember seeing and spam in a while. Thanks for all of your effort.
We're still getting a few, but the number of spammers registering are about 10X less. Jan and Ranger1 have been doing a great job squashing their posts as quickly as possible. I really appreciate their work keeping the forums safe!

-DougO

[AaronB]

We're still getting a few, but the number of spammers registering are about 10X less. Jan and Ranger1 have been doing a great job squashing their posts as quickly as possible. I really appreciate their work keeping the forums safe!

-DougO

I didn't know that was the case. Major kudos to Jan and Ranger1 as well in that case.

[Ranger1]

Thanks ;)

And since i can't say only thanks because its too short for a reply, im typing this line :D