spam members

[John Headstrong]

there are hundreds of spam members being added everyday, I was trying to figure out how many real members there where but the spam is to much.

if the admins need help sorting this let me know, I have experience in this sort of thing

[Shirley]

Thanks - I'll pass this message on to Andy currently we are fighting to zap the spam members as they come in but there can be hundreds each day - not a happy task to sit and delete so many at a time - it often means that we can't join in with the general chat as much as we'd like.

[wulf]

There is an add-on for PHPBB2 called (I think) userlist, which is very handy on a forum where I help with moderation. I don't know about where to get it or how easy it is to install but it makes light work of zapping dodgy looking accounts (for example any that include a URL that points to an obvious spam site).

Wulf

[marshlander]

shirlz, It's not just fake newbies, you've got 'adult' content www links in your member list see 538,539,540 (was afraid to look at many in case of virus) student loans, blue pills - these are not ishers!

Some web sites ask you to type in a number which is difficult to read; would this stop fake members?

[Shirley]

I would recommend that you do not click ANY links on the memberlist until we've sorted this out.

The spam members are NOT activated and can not post on the forum.

The forum will be upgraded very soon and should hopefully make it more difficult for these spam members to join in the first place.

I'll pass the comments from this thread to Andy & Dave.

[Martin]

dear oh dear oh lord oh christmas!
Something tells me you're not going for "admin or moderator approval" on new members
- I assure you that no genuine new member minds in the least the small wait to gain entry - I'm admin on another board - before instituting "moderator approval" for all new members it took HOURS to sort the wheat from the chaff (and even then we didn't always get it right!) - nowadays people are well aware of the problems with spammers, and you do not lose any worthwhile members by approving them first! - after a while you find spammers just "give up"- I haven't had to zap one for weeks!
To be honest, you'll lose more members by the site "hanging" when the page tries unsuccessfully to load........which it is doing more and more due to the "statcounter" code someone's embedded in the header! !!!!! (AS I've said on at least three occasions, you have some really good statcounters built-in to the control panel - just switch on something like "Awstats", and you'll have really accurate, and far more detailed stats than Statcounter can EVER give, and you won't get the dreaded page downloading slow up which is getting worse and worse due to "Statcounter")
Explanation for confused non-geek bystanders - someone has put a bit of extra "code" into the header of the page - every time you do anything on the site, the page "header" has to reload - the bit of extra code sends statistics to a company called "Statcounter" which counts things like page hits etc which can then be accessed by the site proprietor........HOWEVER, this is a free service, which is grossly over-subscribed, so it means that increasingly the pages don't load anywhere near as fast as they should, because they're "waiting" for a response from the overloaded "Statcounter" servers.........what is so frustrating is that there is no need to use a poxy free counting service, there's a whole selection built-in to the website control panel which work in a different way, don't slow up the site, and give much more accurate statistics................
-probably clear as mud!

[red]

Martin, nope, as Shirlz already stated we do have to activate every member. - the spammers can join but not do anything. I know its tedious that they are there at all, but the forum is being overhauled very soon, and this problem should go away.

As it is, genuine new members can and do join, its just a matter of cleaning up the memberlist.

As shirlz said, don't click on any of the websites found in the memberlist and you should be fine.

[Annpan]

I am just nosey... how is the site being overhauled????

I like the occasional spammer squeezing through, it is fun to post :spam: emoticons

[snapdragon]

phew - soo glad it's not just me that noticed - I admin a forum built on the same base as this and share the task of deleting all the spam joiners.
I know there's a new phpbb bit out - but we're still zapping 'em off the list with the previous version

[Millymollymandy]

Well Annpan we did think of asking you and Thomzo to be mods but we felt it would have been too mean because we were spending ages every day deleting the spam new users from the member list - and it's not fair on anybody to be doing that as it's a really boring and time-consuming task. We (mods) were doing it to the detriment of our time spent chatting on the forum.

Although Andy and Dave have been very busy with writing the book, now that that's over they have some time to sort out a forum upgrade, and we've been told not to delete the spam new users any more because the upgraded forum makes it a lot easier to delete them quickly (or we jolly hope so!).

Life as a mod hasn't been much fun these last 6 months or so!

[Annpan]

I'd be honoured to be a mod (if you do ask me) I have a spare 20 minutes now and then, I'd be willing to share the load

Keep me in mind, if you are looking for anyone

[Wombat]

Harrr Harr Lass!

She gets my vote she do, Har Har!

(said with pirate accent and while waving a hook!)










I really need to get more sleep

Nev

[beatsworking]

Huh! I have a discussion board on my website. When we set it up, we had hundreds of people joining in a few weeks. I was very excited until it was pointed out to me that they nearly all came from Russia and USA and were therefore very unlikely to be wanting to discuss the merits of Suffolk jams!

We installed a gizmo that makes people registering type in a random word that appears - this has managed to stop entirely the spammers getting on my discussion boards.

The downside is, I now have 8 members of which I am 2!

[Millymollymandy]

Anyway the problem here has been sorted now thanks to John Headstrong! Only real members in the member list now - and we have quite a lot!

[ina]

That latest member has a website with a suspicious sounding name... Something with pills in it?!