deminimis
Since 15 Jul 2014
326 Posts
On the Rocks
Obsessed
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Sat Aug 17, 19 4:53 pm Spam Update |
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In an attempt to curb spammers, scammers, and assorted miscreants from gaining access to this site, new registrations now require moderator approval. It works. Last night, while most of you slumbered, approx 15 new accounts sought approval. They were all bogus. Pretty obvious given the hour. Without mod approval, that would have been 15 new bogus accounts and untold associated spam.
There are still an unknown number of bogus accounts. Probably quite a few. As they reveal their hand, we'll continue to delete the spam posts and ban the users.
At any time there are large numbers of "guests" viewing our pages. In fact, many of these are looking at people's profiles. These IPs often from counties known for scamming. Do not put any sensitive information in your profile (name, email, phone, etc.). There is no way to make the forum invisible to non-members with the old program we are running. Hopefully we can change this soon, but protect your personal information.
Finally, a mod switched off the mod approval for new accounts this AM. Please don't. Bogus new accounts got through in that short window. Deleting a batch of member request emails when you get up is painless. Having to go through and manually delete 50 bogus posts, bogus accounts and IPs every day is not. It's a huge time suck.
Since the huge majority of bogus new account attempts occur late at night and up to around 8AM (because most live in other parts of the world), I would suggest all mods summarily disregard any account requests outside of 8AM to 5PM. New account requests between 8AM and 5PM should be individually reviewed (there ain't many). I'm happy to be solely responsible for reviewing new account requests if that makes it easier for the other mods and to keep us all on the same page. PM me if you like.
Anyway, I hope most of you have noticed an improvement in the number of bogus posts as of today. Seems we are on the right track. Again, if one pops up, free free to PM me so I can get after it. Thank you. Last edited by deminimis on Wed Aug 21, 19 6:54 am; edited 2 times in total |
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