Rejected registrations

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gsbpel
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Rejected registrations

Post by gsbpel »

We brought our boat home March of 08 so I guess I am over due for dues. Send me an address so I can do a check for a couple years dues for the one I missed and the next. I do not do any finances over the net. Yeh Yeh I am old fashioned.
Ron
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Rejected registrations

Post by Ron »

I must be getting 10 or more attempted spammer registrations every day. Sort of piles up if I skip a day or two or three. I've gotten to the point where I reject the new registrant if his user id or email id looks phony, and that includes anything related to "porn" imbedded in either. You'd be surprised how may are coming thru like this. Many have something like "12X @ 55Y.com for an email or total gibberish in both. They must be running out of actual words or names to plug in. If the user name or email id looks like it could be legitimate, I do further checking to validate it. There are a few "forum spammer" lists out on the web. Over 90 percent of those that look legitimate are on most of these lists.

Anyway - If I accidently reject anyone who fits into one of the above categories and is legitimate, please let me know.

The other thing is what is the worst case scenario if we let them in? I'm pretty sure Will did on the old forum and it did not seem to hurt. He had us up to around 600 users in less than a year (we've got about 130 now). I'm sure most of them where phony. I did recall one incident where the forum got linked to a porn web site, so ??? Any comments or suggestions?
Ron Marcuse
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Ron
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Rejected registrations

Post by Ron »

I just had to knock out over 100 attempted registrations who were apparently spammers. Too many to research, so I glanced at them and rejected all but one on the jibberish or porn words they fabricated for a user name. From this point on, anyone who has attempted to register using some sort of crazy name may have to contact me, because I'm losing my patience. When the user name does not spell out a real word or a real name, then it's going to be rejected.

Dan - What's going on? Shouldn't the little graphic display of letters and numbers you must type on that screen take care of this? How are they getting to the point where the registration attempt is allowed and then waits for administrator approval (which they are not getting)?
Ron Marcuse
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Ron
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Rejected registrations

Post by Ron »

The percentage of registrations for spammers vs real people seems to be around 99.99% spammers now. I have to go thru about 200 or 300 of these idiots to find one legitimate registration. I'm at the point of deleting anyone who does not have a real looking user name. Names like "buy-viagra" or "xqtuvbmj" will immediately wind up in the waste basket. If your email address gets rejected or you don't hear from me within 3 or 4 days (vacations aside), please contact me and I'll try to get you registered. Sorry for the inconvenience, but this is getting ridiculous now.

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Dan - Why is the procedure of having to type the bit mapped character picture to register not working. Actually, it neverseemed to work. This should eliminate all (or at least most) of these spammers. Are they sitting there typing out the characters? I assumed it was computers trying to do mass registrations on many boards. If most are being automatically rejected, do you have any stats on the total number of attempted registrations.
Ron Marcuse
Telstar 28 #359 "Tri-Power"
Ron
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Rejected registrations

Post by Ron »

It's getting to the point where I'm going to start ignoring just about ALL of the new registrations and dump them into the garbage. I must have rejected about 500 attempted registrations in the last week. Not one even looked legitimate - they were probably all spammers. Any real person who wants to register should maybe contact me first? And it would help if you try to register with a normal user name - things like x3xers94lop or qqtioxv7q will be immediately tossed. Ditto for terms like viagra imbedded in the name.

Dan, if you see this - why are all of these generated user names getting past the bit map check where you have to re-enter the characters? Are their computers analyzing this grid and getting the code? Should we increase the difficulty?
Ron Marcuse
Telstar 28 #359 "Tri-Power"
Ron
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Rejected registrations

Post by Ron »

I just got back from a weeks vacation. Must have been over 400 new registrations, all spammers. It's been months since I actually put someone through the system, probably over 3,000 rejections in this time frame. As I said before - I'm going to eliminate just about everthing from now on. If it looks like it could be a real person, I will check it our first.

DAN - HAVE YOU SEEN MY NUMEROUS PREVIOUS QUESTIONS ABOUT STOPPING THIS WITH THE VISUAL CONFIRMATION (GRAPHIC) DISPLAY? THESE SPAMMERS SHOULD NEVER HAVE GOTTEN TO THE REGISTRATION POINT. WE ALSO HAVE TO UPGRADE THE SOFTWARE..
Ron Marcuse
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Ron
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Rejected registrations

Post by Ron »

Thanks for the info, but I do not have the authority to modify this stuff. Dan, who appears to be missing-in-action, does. It does explain the increase in attempted registrations. I think I must have rejected perhaps 3,000 of them since the last one got approved months ago.

The characters that have to be re-produced are not for existing members. Asking questions to most legitimate new users would not get any correct answers either.
Ron Marcuse
Telstar 28 #359 "Tri-Power"
Ron
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Rejected registrations

Post by Ron »

OK - I'm getting fed up with this stuff. I just went thru about 800 new registrations (from the last 5 days) with no real users in the group. As a temporary fix, I increased the CAPTCHA complexity to the highest level supported by this board. I'm also having it knock out most email addresses. We might be at the point where any new user will have to contact me first to get registered.
Ron Marcuse
Telstar 28 #359 "Tri-Power"
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