Spam To Registered Email Address Options

[bear]

Are we sure that these are bots that are posting and not the beginning of a new style of telemarketer concept? Would it be an idea to have the new user sign up and post only to a single thread location asking for someone to sponser their full posting membership. This way any long time members could decide if the newbee is legit, not sure if this is feasable within the forum design though.

[null_pointer]

Are we sure that these are bots that are posting and not the beginning of a new style of telemarketer concept?

I agree, this could be the beginning of something new. It could be a 3rd world cash for posts type set-up where a company or person sets up a few 3rd world offices and puts kids behind old hardware and gives them 1 cent per post. This is juts a guess but other set-ups like this have been done before.

[bear]

Would it be possible to limit new members posts to a text only post, i.e. no signatures, quotes etc and use a text link filter, e.g. no HTTP or www allowed? This would prevent any direct links etc from being displayed and hence remove the motovation for a telemarketer to post here since they would not be able to be paid for a useless advert. The new member could then ask for full permissions if they wish to post links etc.

[Calvi]

Good idea Dan,

I still think asking questions is a good filter, even for human forumarketers.

Things like...

Who is the Prime Minister of Australia?
What is the capital of Australia?

etc. I know this forum is also for international users but anyone can/should work out these answers.

Perhaps a few others like Finish the sentence "The leaning tower of " etc.

I must admit though it sounds a bit like the citizen test!

[Guest_sobriquet_*]

Not sure how workable it would be in this situation (i.e. not sure how many legitimate registrations you get each day), but I used to run a forum where we wanted to make sure the users were ACTUALLY interested in the topic - so when they registered, they got an automatic email basically asking - "tell me why you'd like to join this board". We'd ignore ALL registration requests, and only look at replies to the "welcome" email. If someone was legit, they'd be activated. We never got responses from spammers, and it was pretty easy to figure out who was legit or not.

[HyperReality]

On a slightly related note, can someone who has the power please get rid of the user "astine" and their posts, as the user appears to be yet another bot. Thanks.

[null_pointer]

On a slightly related note

its not just slightly related, it is the main point of the latest discussion.

I think Rob is the only one with full admin control that can ban users and mass delete posts.

[n0xlf]

Rob hasn't been too active on here as of late, but I wacked him (and his posts) for ya...

[Calvi]

Thanks,

sorry to harp on but...

any chance on adding some bot test questions to the registration?

[a_a]

Rob hasn't been too active on here as of late, but I wacked him (and his posts) for ya...

Poor Rob...

[HyperReality]

Rob hasn't been too active on here as of late, but I wacked him (and his posts) for ya...

Cheers.

You might want to have a look at "uhila" and "logan" too as they also come across as being bots - they both have a similar pinnaclesys.com link in their signatures; though it seems quite unusual for a big company like Pinnacle to be involved in this sort of blatant spamish SEO/link building.

[n0xlf]

Cheers.

You might want to have a look at "uhila" and "logan" too as they also come across as being bots - they both have a similar pinnaclesys.com link in their signatures; though it seems quite unusual for a big company like Pinnacle to be involved in this sort of blatant spamish SEO/link building.

Deleted - They didn't look very legit...

[null_pointer]

Hi n0xlf,

To make it easier for you to identify bogus spam posts I have stopped deleting them.