Rejected registrations

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commodore
Site Admin
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Rejected registrations

Post by commodore »

Hi All -

I'm finding about 10 to 15 spammers a day who are trying to join the forum - perhaps 50 over the last 4 days. Dan has found a bunch as well. I am deleting almost everything, but I occasionally find a new registration that is legitimate. In case I mistakenly delete or reject your forum registraton (because of the ip address or a bad email id), please let me know and it will be allowed the next time you try to register.
commodore
Site Admin
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Rejected registrations

Post by commodore »

Just a reminder to any legitimate new user who does not become activated within 2 or 3 days - please contact me thru this forum and I will then verify your request. I'm deleting about 95% of the new registrations because they look like forum spammers attempting to gain access.
Ron
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Joined: Mon Nov 24, 2008 6:15 pm
Location: SW Florida
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Rejected registrations

Post by Ron »

Sorry - another reminder that I've been knocking off a bunch of spammers every day who are trying to gain access to this forum. I'm knocking off anyone who's request originated in certain countries (Russia, Israel, China, etc.) and those whose email id appears on some spam lists. Just did around 10 more of these and I'm starting to get annoyed at all of this ________ (insert your own word here). What are they trying to gain by spamming a bunch of forums? I'm starting to take some shortcuts and I may accidently knock off a legitimate forum registration. I apoligize in advance. If you can't register and you are a real person who wants to join, send me an personal message or something like that.
Ron Marcuse
Telstar 28 #359 "Tri-Power"
Pat Ross
Posts: 185
Joined: Sun Jul 05, 2009 7:15 am
Location: Panhandle Florida U. S. Gulf Coast
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Rejected registrations

Post by Pat Ross »

Ron,

I don't know what this particular software offers you as a moderator for options. The group I moderate through Yahoo allows me to admit people but keep all there posts under review before they are allowed to openly post. Since I started doing this I have had 0 problems with that group being spammed. Once they are admitted they get a message that says all posts will be reviewed prior to being posted to the main forum. Once I determine a person is legitimate through a couple supervised posts then I admit them openly to the forum. It takes a little more time but it solves the guessing game as to their legitimacy.

Pat
Ron
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Rejected registrations

Post by Ron »

Pat -

I can do what you suggest, but I'd rather not let them in at all. We'd have 1,000 people on this list where maybe 80 are real. I can block email id's fairly easily, such as *.gmail.com (the * is a wild card) where I'd get maybe 10 more spammers a day. I google the email id to see what spam blocking lists they are on. If they appear on any of them they are gone. Just about everything from several countries are bots attempting to gain access. I sometimes see 5 registrations in a row with the same email id. Absolutely ridiculous. What do they expect to gain other than messing up some forum. They must be power boaters.

Dan - Do you have any comments?
Ron Marcuse
Telstar 28 #359 "Tri-Power"
Pat Ross
Posts: 185
Joined: Sun Jul 05, 2009 7:15 am
Location: Panhandle Florida U. S. Gulf Coast
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Rejected registrations

Post by Pat Ross »

Ron wrote:They must be power boaters.
I think you got it!

Pat :lol:
Ron
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Rejected registrations

Post by Ron »

A real person with a gmail.com email address tried to register for the forum and he couldn't, so I removed "*@gmail.com" from the banned list. The flood gates then opened and next morning there were over 50 "people" trying to register for the forum and 90% of them were from gmail.com. All were spammers and I got tired of doing some of the vailidity checks, so I finally zapped them all. It was sort of obvious from the email id's and user names what they were. So - I'm going to stop gmail.com again, and maybe some others like hotmail.com from registering. If you are trying to register and it states that you have an invalid email address, let me know and I'll get you in. I don't have an extra hour every day to vailidate all of these clowns.

I may also start knocking out id's and ip's by country. The vast majority of the spam registrations seem to be coming from Russia, countries once associated with Russia, Israel and much of the middle east, and China and some of it's neighbors.

I have absolutely no idea why they are trying to get into all of the internet forums. Do they expect to make money off of it?
Ron Marcuse
Telstar 28 #359 "Tri-Power"
Pat Ross
Posts: 185
Joined: Sun Jul 05, 2009 7:15 am
Location: Panhandle Florida U. S. Gulf Coast
Contact:

Rejected registrations

Post by Pat Ross »

You may want to add some type of information on the Registration page. That way they know of front if they are legitimate what gate they need to enter through.

Pat
gsbpel
Posts: 21
Joined: Fri Apr 24, 2009 7:06 pm
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Rejected registrations

Post by gsbpel »

I would like to know what kind of membership I need to view the Members area. I receive a statement that says I do not have permission to view and use the member area. Granted, I do not have a lot of opportunities to participate and I do not know when dues are due but owning hull # 369, which is still at Performance Sailing for repairs, should have some meaning. You can decide; am I a Member or not?

DKL

gsbpel@yahoo.com

S/V Shadow Princess Hull #369
Ron
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Rejected registrations

Post by Ron »

Dale -

Technically, you got the 1st year free courtesy of Peformance Cruising, who contributed $10 for each boat sold. Actually, everyone wound up getting about 18 months because we did not start collecting dues until spring of last year - and I did not knock off those who did not pay (around 15 owners) until maybe September. So the question is - when did you get the boat?

The forum and web site will cost us about $300 a year, so it is probably justified to ask those who have a boat (or want one) to join. You can join or renew at http://www.telstarowners.com/. We wind up with about $9.40 after paypal takes it's cut. We need at least 40 paying members to make this work. Right now we have about 50 members so next year is guarenteed. If it goes much higher we will reduce the dues. We have enough in reserve to pay for the software that Dan needs to move the messages from the old forum to this one. Hopefully that will happen over the winter. This is a non-profit and I want to keep it that way.

With Performance Cruising out of the picture, the free 1st year will depend on what "Performance Sailing" does when they start building more boats. We'll probably do the renewals in May or so.
Ron Marcuse
Telstar 28 #359 "Tri-Power"
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