Spam accounts in the forum

[cdmilton]

Becca, what are you thinking about doing with all the spam accounts that seem to post in the forum daily? Have you tried increasing the complexity for registrations? Shoot me a note if you want some assistance with that.

[coachjvinson]

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[cdmilton]

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[KirkB]

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I love these oxymorons!

But seriously, this spam is getting ridiculous.

RainbowGirl: How about delaying registrations for one day, while you "qualify" them? We want to encourage new vaulters and coaches to register, but surely they can wait a day before they post anything. They usually surf for quite awhile before they make their first post anyway, don't they? At least the legit ones do. The spammers don't.

Just a suggestion.

Another idea I have (I'm no expert at this) is to allow new registrants by reference only. So if an existing forum registrant recommends a new vaulter or coach (or parent or fan, etc), they should know them as belonging to our PV community (or at least know that they're not a spammer). And if the new registrant turns out to be a spammer, then the person that recommended them should be banned from the forum (along with the spammer).

Again, just an idea.

Kirk

[cdmilton]

I am not sure of the volume of new registrations but you can also manually approve registrations. When reviewing them it is pretty easy to identify spammers vs real people. There are also other ways to complicate the registration process and make it harder for spammers to register and post. I have a little experience with this from other forums I have managed so that is why I brought it up.

The forum is becoming unreadable now with all the spam post bumping up threads.

[rainbowgirl28]

I need to upgrade the message board software sometime to the latest version of PhpBB, hoping that will help. I get hundreds of registrations per day, having to manually approve people means I'll miss a lot of legitimate users. The CAPTCHAs are worthless, and all of the bots have figured out that Sergei Bubka is the world record holder They already have to confirm their email before they can post. I am daily banning IP addresses and ranges and email domains.

[rainbowgirl28]

I deleted the account "STOP THE SPAM" or whatever, because it would have taken my too long to individually delete 33 of his 34 posts.

Here is what he posted

I woke up this morning to find EIGHT pages of spam! There was nothing about pole vaulting to be found anywhere! As you can see it did not take me any effort at all to bomb you with my own spam pleading with you to stop the spam!

It is simple. Make it so you or someone you choose, I am sure there will be a ton of volunteers, has to activate each individual account. There are probably far more fake accounts than real accounts made daily so make it something simple like they have to email a certain email address with their username and say something smart that has to do with pole vaulting. Or put a 24 hour delay on when someone can post. A real pole vaulter or coach will come back, a spammer will move onto the next easiest to crack website.

Heck come up with a tougher question than who is the world record holder! Computers can guess and get it right since you have a 50/50 shot with your drop down bar. Put a question that is easily googled but they have to type, or give more choices.

I don't care how you do it, but this chaos has to stop!!! I was a PVP addict and I am going crazy!!!!

I am really sorry that the spam bots have run loose I try to get on every day to delete them. There are literally hundreds registering every day. There's not a ton I can do. I am limited by the phpBB software that the board is run on. There is an option for me to manually activate accounts, but since there are hundreds registering per day, I often end up deleting valid accounts. I don't know, maybe I will try switching to that. I have CAPTCHAs in place, which do nothing. I have a knowledge question in place, which is obviously not working any more. I can try changing the question and adding more options but I'm not sure how much that will slow things down.

Anyway, I wanted you all to know I am doing the best I can. I am always open to ideas, but please understand that I am not a programmer and I can't just add features out of thin air.

[PV2020]

Becca,

PM sent...