Forums @ Antelope Valley Thespians

As some of you may have noticed we have been hit pretty hard by spammers in recent days. Bot protection measures are so far not working, so I will have to modify some of them. Also, some of these spammers are actual humans manually registering and posting spam, which is very difficult to counter of course.

So far and thanks to users reporting spam posts, I have been able to blanket delete offending users and all their posts, as well as issue permanent bans by username, email, and IP address.

Until I find a more automatic solution, newly registered users will be unable to activate their own accounts. I will have to manually activate any new registered user; due to the deluge of spam bots registering (over 50/day right now), I may not see or be able to identify a legitimate user.

IF YOU ARE TRYING TO REGISTER FOR THE BOARD:
Go through the normal registration process. It will tell you that your account must be activated by the admin. Send me an email at quantumcowboy AT avthespians DOT org letting me know that you are not a bot. Yes, a human spammer can contact me too, but there are other ways of determining legit users, which I will not describe here (that might allow them to be circumvented).

IF YOU ARE A CURRENT USER:
Report any instances of spam, phishing, trolling, obscenity, or abuse immediately. Click the red exclamation mark in the questionable post. This raises a red flag for moderators and admins logging in to come and take a look. Thanks for helping us keep a clean board!

Visual confirmation difficulty has been enhanced, and normal user registration has resumed. Please be on the alert for spammers, and report them immediately.

Thanks to James Jay for spotting a couple new spammers despite the upgrades. There has been a significant effect though... we've dropped from about 50-60 spambot registration requests per day to about 15. Obviously it wasn't completely spam proof, and it never will be now that apparently we're a well-used board, but I am implementing the following measures that should help a great deal but will at the same time not be nearly as draconian as requiring manual admin activation of all new users:

1. GD CAPTCHA (the noise distortion on the visual confirmation graphic) has been slightly upgraded further.

2. Any new users' first three posts must be approved by the admin or the deputy admin (position pending) before they will appear.

3. You may not post again for 30 seconds after just posting.

Spamming and phishing will continue to carry the penalty of permanent ban by IP address, username, and email on the first offense.

Yeah! Nuts to all spammers!

Due to the spambots getting out of control (again), I had to drop a nuke... all users who registered after May 1 2009 and had 0 posts were wiped. Apologies if there were innocent bystanders, please rejoin and post in the introductions thread... but it was so worth it to delete 417 users in one go. Most were awaiting registration confirmation, probably from submitting bogus emails.

The visual confirmation letters for registration have been made yet harder. Overall, the rule of requiring your first three posts to be approved by a moderator is working... we have caught and banned over 30 spammers who made it through the registration process, without ever having their posts shown to general users.

Keep up the vigilance, and thanks as always to James Jay, board sheriff!

Great! That means I can hang up my guns for a while......