Spammers

[Niklas Dahlin]

Is it my computer or are we having problems with spamrobots again.. Quite anoying..

Later
Niklas

[dazwah]

not your pc, the forum is being bombarded.

[catskilljohn]

Joe is working on this. Its pretty frustrating, every morning logging on and having 30 new members, all with their birthdays on the same day. They are figuring out how to disable their online status too, so when your deleting posts they are posting new ones simultaneously. Very clever from a machine.

It seems to me it is better than before though. There are only a few spammers that actually get in to post, so that is better. I really cant wait to get this resolved, I feel like it may deter real members from actually coming back. CJ

[Allan]

I fully admit, I am computer clueless. Having said that, can't the administrators just create a couple of brief questions that a visitor must answer correctly to get on the site plus have a couple of references of existing members? In other words, someone must be vouched for by means of a confirmed invitation. Just asking.

Allan

[dennis]

Thanks for cleaning it up for a while. Yesterday it was really bad, we shut down till after the show.

I think Allan might have something there with references and must be approved by the board to post.
I also am computer clueless but maybe we need to add more members to administer the post's. I'm sure that would not be a problem.

thanks Dennis

[Joe Fox]

It has been a HUGE problem. We have made a number of fixes, all worked to a degree but we still are getting a few each hour.
Out issue is we are dealing with REAL people, not bots. That makes almost everything we use to block bots useless. We could stop this problem in a hot second, but in the process would end up blocking some current and future members. This morning I have a phone meeting with my webmaster and it looks like we will be approving new members, something I did not want to do. At least then the members in good standing would not be subjected to the spammers, only the mods and myself would.

Joe

[skondolf]

Thanks guys for your continued work on trying to clear up/prevent the crap coming in.

[Bamboo&Brookies]

It may sound drastic, but I think that approving new members is probably the way to go and will help weed out all the spam.

I mentioned this to CJ, but another outdoor site I go to has to approve all new members and doing so has really reduced the spam.

Joe, CJ, Mike and all, thanks for all your hard work keeping the site running amidst these 'attacks.'

What a drag.

Rob

[Mantis]

I have a feeling they are bypassing the protocol and just hacking in. bob

[Soft-hackle]

Approving members is a good way to keep out spammers and I do not think it will discourage anyone that is truly interested in being a member, here. I do this regularly with my forum, and we have had very few spammers. It is getting so I can pick out spammers pretty well, but there are sites online which will help you identify spammers by their user name, e-mail or IP address. Don't worry, Joe approving new members isn't that hard and will help this situation tremendously.

Mark