Registered forum members: Clean-up in progress

[MattNoVAT]

As part of the forum maintenance I have started the process of cleaning up the registered forum members. 

There are a a high number of spammers that have managed to get through the registration process or registered before the introduction of the forum utility that scans new members registration details on the StopFourmSpam Database prior to being approved.

Only profiles that have NEVER logged on are being deleted, but in the checking process some legitimate forum members are being highlighted as potential Spammers on the list of registered profiles with a hit on the StopForumSpam database.  Two reasons for this: 1. A commonly used forum User Name or 2. Registration was done at say an Internet Cafe / or Shared public TCP/IP address.

If your profile is accidentally deleted please contact the Site Admins and I'll get the profile re-instated ASAP.

Hopefully it won't occur but I just wanted members to be aware of what is going on behind the scenes to keep the forum spam free. :-)

Thanks for your understanding and patience 

[Hawk]

Thanks for the update

I wasn't aware of the stopforumspam site so thanks - I admin a motorcycle forum (TRX850.com) and we are being plagued by spammers at the moment (mostly using temporary email addresses)

[MattNoVAT]

Its a handy tool as it highlights if there are any hits on the database for forum User Name, registered email address or IP address of where the registration was submitted from.

Us Admins still have to go check out these details even if they do not appear on the database because it could be a new email adress thay have just hi-jacked, a randomly generated User Name or the Spoof thier IP address...... it all takes timeto check before approval is given  ;-)

[Hawk]

Like you, I manually authorise but I've still had a couple get through.

Thanks again for the info

[AndrewJ]

I had similar problem by the Hungarian Lancia forum with SMF 2.0RC4 engine untill this November. I had too many spam users every day trying to register and I was angry because of the many authorisation emails from the forum. I installed some antispam modules, but these modules also could not filter all the spam users.

Then I tried a new idea: I completely disabled the registration in the admin panel and I created an invitation in JPG (because of the published email address) on the main page of my site. I created a register@.. email address forwarded to my address.

I asked everybody who wants to register to send an email to this address with the required nick and a few words about his/her Lancia. Nowdays I register these new users manually with a random password - that can be easily changed in the profile page. It takes just a minute for me to make the registration, and I have about one or two registration(s) in a week.

Since November I haven't had any new spam users - but it is a bit easier by a Hungarian language page, because the Russian and other manually registering "human robots" cannot understand the text in our invitation JPG.

I also installed a module that hides the forum content from the unregistered users and set up a one year interval: the user who does not log in for a year is automatically deleted. Now I am absolutely satisfied with my forum  ..