We have 5722 registered users........

Willincity

What is the score here?
Never in the creation of crow sh1t have we drawn so many new users from so many overseas locations.

The last 750 new users (about 15 pages) have all turned up within the last 3 weeks or so showing some odd WWW. websites and strange locations.

Not that it bothers me that much but is there any way of trashing the obvious cr@p without taking up too much time?
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Just read about the evils of drinking and though it's about time I gave up this bloody reading.

deeuu · Posted: Mon Aug 21, 2006 6:16 am Post subject:

We have a problem with spambots, i.e. automatic registration engines that try to leech on to Forums and add bogus users with links to spam sites.

The Admins were looking into alternative methods for registration that require some form of individual user verification process to sign up. At present, all new sign ups must be authorised by the Admin team. This means we have to vet every single applicant which is massively time consuming and I must admit a bit hit and miss.

Unfortunately, from an Administration point of view, there is no simple solution where we can just browse through and click delete. The process of removing a user (or banning them Wink

) is very time consuming.

As I posted some time ago, if someone has knowledge of an SQL Script we can run on the main database, that doesn't remove all American and other bona fide users, please contact us.

For those who do take notice, this explains in part why I currently have little patience with people who seek to fight with the moderating team and bleat on about bans etc... There are far more pressing issues with which I should be filling what time I have. This is one of them.
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529 Surrender Monkeys deserve Agent Orange
Közeli helyeken

Willincity · Posted: Mon Aug 21, 2006 11:59 am Post subject:

Thanks for the reply, appreciated you took the time for the explanation, cheers,

...still learning every day.
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Just read about the evils of drinking and though it's about time I gave up this bloody reading.

deeuu · Posted: Mon Aug 21, 2006 9:59 pm Post subject:

Thanks for raising this matter Willincity...

I have to admit the Admins did discuss this matter at length some time back and we have been dealing with it on an ad hoc basis (in some part thanks to having to deal with other rather annoying issues Evil or Very Mad

).

Maybe one or two of you will now realise why I get so teed off with the constant bitching about petty bans?

I think you will find that the user count now stands at 5134 as I have just spent several hours installing something new and deleting spammers to deal with this problem.

If I have been over zealous in deleting new accounts, please accept my apologies, any that appeared in anyway dodgy were dispatched, so sorry but if you choose to use a dodgy email address or use a bizarre user name it is hardly my fault is it?

One thing that may need to happen is a full version upgrade of the board but I suspect the Admins will confer on this and give everyone notice if there is any downtime due to this.

For those people raising issues of virus threats, please be assured that during my recent purging stint, I ran various security checks and there is nothing malicious within this site (except possibly me Laughing

). So no viruses here folks, look elsewhere I am afraid...

And thank you for your patience, well some of you anyway Laughing

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529 Surrender Monkeys deserve Agent Orange
Közeli helyeken

the crow

JQW · Posted: Tue Aug 22, 2006 7:33 am Post subject:

You could try blocking registrations using E-mail addresses from certain domains. *.ru and *.info are particularly used by spammers.

Turning on visual confirmation also blocks many spammers.

Paul · Posted: Thu Aug 24, 2006 7:02 am Post subject:

Don't know how it works but some sites when registering require the person registering to enter a conformation number - usually on the screen in hard to read multicolours.
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JQW · Posted: Thu Aug 24, 2006 10:28 am Post subject:

Bobby · Posted: Mon Aug 28, 2006 7:34 pm Post subject:

harriers-online.co.uk@yor · Posted: Sun Sep 17, 2006 7:07 pm Post subject:

This is the hack needed to delete unwanted registrations quickly. Just click on the name and it takes you straight to their profile where you'll now find a new section that can only be seen by admin. Simple to install.

http://www.phpbbhacks.com/download/6208

This next one is the hack for stopping new registrations from entering websites and signatures before being approved by admin. Also easy to install.

http://www.phpbbhacks.com/download/6568

As a warning you can also change the text of the file named admin_welcome_activated.tpl that can be found in the Language>lang English>Email folder so that if a dodgy user is activated by mistake they will have received a warning that they will be deleted once they do enter a dodgy web address after being un-able to do so on initial registration. Confused

Here's the kind of thing I mean:

Hello {USERNAME},

Welcome to Harriers Chatter, the message board of the premier Kidderminster Harriers website, Harriers Online.
Your account on "{SITENAME}" has now been activated, you may login using the username and password you received in a previous email.

Please visit your profile once you have logged in where you can tweak the settings to suit your needs. This includes adding your own website if you have one.

Be aware that if your website contains un-suitable material or is merely a way to get yourself noticed by Google etc then your account will be deleted.

{EMAIL_SIG}

Hope this is of help to you.

Phil...
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