Automated Spam Check/New Member Verification

[Ed Lecuyer]

Hi All,

Over the last month or so, this forum has been attacked nearly 900 times by spambots trying to post ads for pharmaceuticals and inappropriate material. To keep this garbage out of our online community, James and I have used a manual process. While it takes only a few seconds to verify each potential member, it is inconvinent for everyone.

Tonight I implemented a change to the source code for the discussion forum that is supposed to automatically reject any known spammer who tries to join us. Hopefully, this will work very well. However, if anyone has trouble logging on or joining the forum, please email me at ed.lecuyer@wwfry.org or forumadmin@wwfry.org.

Thanks,

-Ed

[James Patten]

This is very good information - so good I decided to make the topic Sticky so anyone that comes here will see it's important enough to read.

[Ed Lecuyer]

In the good news department, the script seems to be working. Out of nearly 50 spam attempts in the last 20 hours, it only allowed 2 to get through.

[Paul Wiggin]

 I would like to change my  log in name to my real name and don't know how to do it.  I went into the 'Modify Profile"  and couldn't do it. Can you change it for me?.
                                                                             Paul Wiggin

[Ed Lecuyer]

Yep. Done.

[Ed Lecuyer]

Well, the spam checker I implemented a few years back seems to have lost its effectiveness. So, I have put in 3 other "mods" to this forum, hopefully to reduce the amount of spammers that get through. Until today, for the last several weeks, I would have to take at least an hour a week to clean out the spammer accounts. I'm hoping that these new measures will put a stop to it.

The bad news is that it is now slightly more difficult to join the forum. The "type the crazy words" box is pretty hard to read; and there is an additional "are you human" check. (The third mod is more behind the scenes.)

If anyone reading this wants to join the forum, but is having difficulties with these new security features, please email me at ed (at) spongeawareness.com.

[Ed Lecuyer]

With the switchover to the new and improved forum, all of the anti-spam checkers were disabled. This resulted in a flood of spammers trying to join - at almost 50 attacks per day.

I was able to put some security back into place - we'll see how well it holds up. If you happened to try to join the forum over the last few days and I did not approve you, please re-apply. (I could not weed through almost 200 new users to try to figure out who might be real.)

And if you are unable to join, please email me at ed.lecuyer(at)wwfry.org or forumadmin(at)wwfry.org.

[James Patten]

Hooray, thank you!

[Steve Smith]

Ed and James, thanks a million for all you do to keep our forum humming!