Small Scale Military Headquarters

OK, we just hit 900 members which would be cause for remark except that I would say 100 of the last 110 members are spam. I know we have only one mod for 8 forums but is there any way we could nix the BS memberships or insert one of those visual text codes for registration? Any tech guys out there?

I noticed that too, If you look at thier websites, some are even pornography sites (I think, I didnt look, just the website has some "names" in there)

I counted over 20 porn sites---some are some kind of forced sex/rape sites!!!! I PMed P-51 to let him know---I didn't want some kid to stumble across one of these sites when looking for some 109's or Sherman's!!! I also think it's BAD for our site!!!! ---RED---

hmm.......i'm not much of a techy, so i don't know how to prevent these kind of unwanted intrusions.

One idea off the top of my head would be to block website insertions from any new members from this point forward. I don't know if that's possible or not.

Failing that maybe require that all new members must have some sort of military name etc in their user name. I suspect spamers don't take the time to read forum rules when they spam, they just do it as fast as possible, so they wouldn't know about the requirement. It may even be automated in some cases. Without the proper etiquette followed in the user name, they would be very easy to quickly identify and eliminate asap.

Any other ideas?

Well, I want to change my name, so I like your idea

another idea would be to require any new member be approved before they can register. That way P-51 can check them out first. Plus the delay and labour intensive nature of registering would probably deter most spamers.

We generally only get 3 or 4 new members per week so it shouldn't be too much work for P-51.

Great, another one

Name= jdouglasrx

Ban his ass

Just looked again and about another 6 new porn sites add to this forums member roster---Hope something can be done!!!!!!---RED---

I agree. No nudes unless they are holding new armor!

Mark

Some more new porn sites added!!!Some websites say they are something else but if you click on them they turn out to be a Forced Sex/Rape site!!!!---RED---

The best bet would be to add one of those image verification tools like ebay and so many other sites have now to defend against bots. This technique is called Captcha also referred to as "Visual Confirmation"

Captcha functionality is built into PHPBB (Which this forum runs on) after version 2.0.11 (Version listed at bottom of this page is 2.0.10) So there would need to be a slight upgrade.

Anyway, here is link on how to implement:
http://www.phpbb.com/kb/article.php?article_id=227

Here's another one with some useful info and tweaking options:
http://www.phpbb.com/phpBB/viewtopic.ph ... ght=robots

There are ways to hack this so it isn't perfect, but Small Scale HQ wouldn't be the lowest hanging fruit anymore.

RED wrote:Just looked again and about another 6 new porn sites add to this forums member roster---Hope something can be done!!!!!!---RED---

That’s bad especially, since there are probably underage members here.

Hey aferg, I noticed that the " spam membership" has increased at a pretty dramatic rate this week.. Is there now way to "ban" these new members so that they don't even show up on the members list???

(On the Modelhanger forum that I am an administrator of, you can ban the member and his IP address so he can't keep coming back.. Also when you ban the member, it erases all trace of his membership)

i can't do anything about it......that's all P-51's domain.

aferguson wrote:i can't do anything about it......that's all P-51's domain.

Aahhhhhh, I see... Maybe P-51 can promote you and give you the powers needed to cleanse the board....

If someone can get ahold of P-51, I'd be happy to help him get the Captcha code implemented.

I have an idea, the spam members just make an account and do nothing, can it be done that, in a certain amount of time after the account is made, say a day or two, it will autodelete if there are no posts made?

I posted this in another thread of the same topic, but I guess this is the proper place.

Like previously mentioned, IP address bans work wonders. I have seen numerous ocassions on other boards where 'Super moderators' actually call the users ISP and warn them of the offenses taking place. These 'problem' users then lose that ISP or it is suspended for so long.

Check out the newest member... But DO NOT click his link...
nice name...

One of these members just posted a link to some porn in an open message in the off topic forum... I strongly suggest we keep our personal information under wraps here. Do not be too specific about where you live and do not use your (or another boardmember's) real name in open posting on the forum. You never know who is watching.

I just changed my location for the time bein, I did not seen your spam post about the porn post, So I posted in it.
Thanks for the heads up

If you see those spam posts just ignore them. Don't post in them, as it makes it harder to delete them and don't click on any links in them, as they may contain viruses.

They usually show up in the off topic forum but there were some in the reference room and b/s/t forum as well.