Membership

[Firemedic2000]

I say we go to a paid membership only to block out these anti gun liberal trolls spamming gun sites. Must have verifiable email address ect.....or something because this guy or lesbian is just going to keep spam this forum with porn.

Unless it's an old perverted member that got the boot doing this. Which really does not matter. It's still b.s. posting porn.

[patw]

The guy is definitely a scum bag. There is always one in the bunch.

[Skoll]

Paid membership only would absolutely kill anyone new looking to get involved in the forum community. I'm for premium memberships but not if that means we can't have free ones. There has to be a balance.

[NorincoKid]

I dunno about paid...

But yeah, something certainly need to be done to weed out this spamming.

Maybe just a temporary hiatus on new membership until some kind of filter can be put in place.

Not sure how it works on the mods end, but are these being banned by name? by IP?

[FfNJGTFO]

Yeah, I have to agree that a paid membership would kill any new participation.... maybe even some of the "old" participation. Perhaps, what might make more sense is to not allow new membership to be "automatic." That is, there should be a step that requires "moderator approval" prior to full activation. A burden on the mods, perhaps, but it would definitely solve the problem. I know some of us would volunteer for "extra duty" to help out the mods...

[Legio]

Not sure how it works on the mods end, but are these being banned by name? by IP?

Done on all of them by IP. The problem is that they use people computers controlled by the millions of malware in service right now and that is a lost battle.

You should see the dozens I remove in the background.

Also I have changed the registrations rules, so it should stop for you on your side. Not on mine though.

[n0rlf]

I have also been removing dozens. It is a losing prospect.

[Legio]

I have also been removing dozens. It is a losing prospect.

Yeah, saw that. Thanks.

[macattack321]

I know that this isn't the magic "fix everything" solution, but I recommend to add a piece of dynamic information (i.e. captcha or something similar) that the user has to enter when creating an account.

I guarantee that the spammer figured out the required fields and the static text that is needed to register an account and just wrote a script. Now, he can create as many accounts as he wants (and then post spam) without any human interaction on the site.

Adding something dynamic to the process would at least hinder him from creating more scripts. Yes, he could still manually go onto the site and do everything himself, but he probably has a big list of sites that he spams. He's not going to log onto all of those accounts manually.

[Deputydave]

Not sure how it works on the mods end, but are these being banned by name? by IP?

Done on all of them by IP. The problem is that they use people computers controlled by the millions of malware in service right now and that is a lost battle.

You should see the dozens I remove in the background.

Also I have changed the registrations rules, so it should stop for you on your side. Not on mine though.

I own the SEP forum and know the problems you face. Captcha and email verification stop a lot of them, not all, but most. I haven't been hit with porn yet, normally it's the jewelry or vacations or whatever. Usually an email ending in .163. And yeah, I'll see them in the background before the membership does. They can't post so I zap them when I see them.

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