Cookaholics Bulletin Board

Looks like we've been discovered by the spammers. In the last week we've had 25 new members join (out of 80 members total on this board) most of them with 12-character cryptic names. I've helped Kathy ban a number of them from the board after they've posted spam, smut or other blatant misbehavioral posts.

It might be time to make it harder for people to sign up - at the minimum using a captcha (I suspect that some of the accounts were user-generated) or requiring more Admin or Moderator approval of new members. The Mod workload over the last week is more than it would have been if they had had to individually approve each of the legitimate members.

Fuzzy: I'll look around to see what phpBB tools are available to fight the spam.

Pete

Looks like here's a start (WARNING: Contains computerspeak and technical info. Probably only useful for Fuzzy):

Preventing Spam in PHP 3.0

Asirra "Human Interactive Proof" tool from Microsoft (Looks like it's a Beta). User identifies which of ten random photos are cats and which are dogs. Easy for humans, hard for bots. Requires JavaScript on the User's browser at registration; probably no big deal to expect that.

Apparently Custom Profile Fields in the signup page are simple and effective, if not as much fun as looking at cats & dogs.

I agree that it might be best that members pass the smell test prior to approval, at least until this wave of spammers has past. Boy...that last one was a doozy..

And I haven't seen any of the good ones. I deleted about 20 posts yesterday morning. I think we are up to about 8 banned users so far.

I would imagine that PHP includes a user approval process but an admin needs to turn it on, at least I haven't found anything yet as a mod.

I didn't see what Da Bull Man was referring to either...

If we bring in new regulations, I hope I make the cut

P.S. Do think it's actually Fuzzy behind all of these and he's just testing us to see if can actually take a real holiday????????

Let's put it this way....it scorched my eyballs..

I'm otta here for the day...gotta run look at a job in Harlingen on the Mexican border...bout a 7 hour drive.

Most of the ones I've seen are a link with a line and a half of random text from somewhere.

Kathy showed me one yesterrday that was a paragraph of pure porn. I read about two lines of it and told her to ban the poster immediately. I never did finish reading it (sniff...).

Ha! I see I'm not the only one who has thought of that.

Hmm, you think Fuzzy wrote the porn himself, or did he just find it on the web? How was the spelling?

Spelling??? You mean there were words??? Pete??? You saw words???...How bout that...