Spam Messages and registration of new users

Due to the large number of spam registrations, I have temporarily deactivated the possibility to sign up, until I have checked all the registrations. If you want to sign up for the forum, please email me and I will register you manually.
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admin
Site Admin
Posts: 65
Joined: Sat Oct 11, 2014 9:22 am

Spam Messages and registration of new users

#1 Post by admin » Thu Nov 03, 2022 11:06 pm

I just removed a large number of spam messages.
In order to reduce the registrations of fake accounts and spam, I recently changed the registration from the security questions to an image with numbers that users have to type in. This did not work well and the number of spam messages increased faster than I could remove them. I therefore want to try the following:

Reintroducing the security questions (which I changed)
Manual approval of the registrations by the admin.
As I can not know if a registration is real or not by the email address or name, I will require that the person send me an additional "application" email.

I hope that this will work better.
Oliver
Science may set limits to knowledge, but should not set limits to imagination.
(Bertrand Russell)

Dubious
Posts: 426
Joined: Sun May 09, 2021 7:55 pm

Re: Spam Messages and registration of new users

#2 Post by Dubious » Fri Nov 04, 2022 3:30 am

admin wrote:
Thu Nov 03, 2022 11:06 pm
I just removed a large number of spam messages.
In order to reduce the registrations of fake accounts and spam, I recently changed the registration from the security questions to an image with numbers that users have to type in. This did not work well and the number of spam messages increased faster than I could remove them. I therefore want to try the following:

Reintroducing the security questions (which I changed)
Manual approval of the registrations by the admin.
As I can not know if a registration is real or not by the email address or name, I will require that the person send me an additional "application" email.

I hope that this will work better.
Oliver
Yeah, the spam artists have gotten quite clever (or their software has). If this new method of preventing spam does not work, or proves too time consuming, some have suggested having volunteers vet the first X postings of new users. Apparently that method has worked very well at some other sites.

Hobbyst46
Posts: 4277
Joined: Mon Aug 21, 2017 9:02 pm

Re: Spam Messages and registration of new users

#3 Post by Hobbyst46 » Fri Nov 04, 2022 8:08 am

Thanks, Oliver !

Nice to have a fresh ,clean and focused ;) board !

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WWWW
Posts: 191
Joined: Fri Sep 16, 2022 6:22 am
Location: The Netherlands

Re: Spam Messages and registration of new users

#4 Post by WWWW » Fri Nov 04, 2022 8:25 am

Well done !!

perrywespa
Posts: 112
Joined: Mon Jun 15, 2020 9:13 pm
Location: Georgia

Re: Spam Messages and registration of new users

#5 Post by perrywespa » Fri Nov 04, 2022 12:59 pm

Thank you!!
Perry
Insatiably curious.

grgh4
Posts: 10
Joined: Thu Oct 30, 2014 11:27 pm

Re: Spam Messages and registration of new users

#6 Post by grgh4 » Mon Nov 07, 2022 12:51 pm

Thank you Oliver, I was getting confused sometimes whether I’d landed on a gaming site?.
Regards.. George

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