A word about new member registrations...
 

After the barrage of spam got this morning, I elected to turn on moderation of new members. This means that I'll be manually approving each new member that joins, from this point forward, to eliminate this crapola.

We may get some spam threads from ones that got by in the interim, but we'll pick those off as needed be :)

I figured some type of moderation or delay would be coming soon. As soon as you guys pop one spammer off, they just re-register and start again. Good job keeping this place clean guys.

What gets me is 95% of the time, the message is so garbled & gobbledygooked up, you can't tell what they're trying to sell..If you're trying to sell somebody something, shouldn't you make it as clear & easy as possible for yr potential customer to buy from you ? Me no unnerstan', Pancho...(grin)

I've got six attempts just since I enabled the feature.....wow.

Thanks a lot. We knew we could depend on YOU. :thmbsp:

You missed one. ;) I reported it, don't worry.

There were a whole bunch of freak registrations that I have to clean out. We're not going to get any new spammers, but there's some dormant ones that may pop up over the next couple days. I cleaned house of the crap that just came up :)

There's still a bunch showin' up on new posts that are "Banned"...You want I should delete the threads ?

Never mind...They're gone now...(grin)

If you want extra help since I'm usually visiting and popping by so much, I could help out and delete any spam that shows up.

AFAIK, we have always done it manually @ AK. But even then, some sneak by. :gigglemad

I think we started that on AK early on because Don kept re-registering just to get Dave angry. Ah, the simple days of forum moderation :D

Might need to reach out for help if it continues, but I think we got this one nailed. Time will tell :)

i know those spammers were getting like rouches every morning .

Yes, quite. And I know what a roach problem is like. !!

Maybe you could add some sort of questions or something to the registration...so you'll know it's not only a real person, but someone who KNOWS what a CRT is...or what AGC stands for. We were having this sort of problem at soulhamsters.com...and the mods added some Kia Soul specific questions to the registration process.

I would if I knew how. I think it's an add-on vBulletin module :dunno:

Thanks for your hard work to keep the forum's high quality intact, Tim.

Perhaps not allowing posts until they answer a pm from you. No module required for that

Well basically at this point, every time there's a new registration, I get an email. The email shows the user's name, their email address, and their registration IP.

These idiots have been easy to spot, using uj8yag8cewopc@gmail or some such. Not real inventive. Might get tougher to spot at some point, but I have to think that as of now, it's being done by some kinda web spam robot program....

Thanks for your efforts, guys. We all appreciate it!

It's nice not having the old semi-regular waves of spam.

I am sorry this is happening....... This is sadly the ONLY WAY to make sure spam doesnt get thru :(

Still see spam. Still is on the stove cooking apparently.

These are from registrations before we enacted the system. We're doing our best to clear them all out, but they're like trying to get rid of ants in the kitchen cupboard, as soon as you think they're all gone, you see one more come out....

This one joined just this month.

http://www.videokarma.org/showthread...07#post3053907

I still feel it's going to be impossible to eradicate it without extra help.

Gone within 10 minutes of the post. Minor inconvenience, but we get 99% of them on registration.

Not sure if this forum software can do it, but when I administered a forum some years ago, this was the registration process.

1. User registers.
2. Gets an email to verify.
3. Clicks link to verify, and then gets to only see one introduction forum which is hidden from normal user view. User must introduce themselves to prove human, and once they do, they get unlocked to the rest of the forum, and that intro post gets moved to the normal introduction forum.

That has worked very well. Only some complaints from new people, but they get over it.

I'm not in control of the site's software, so here is how I have it set up, which has worked out pretty well.

1. User registers.
2. Gets an email to verify.
3. Clicks link to verify, their username is then held in a queue. From there, I inspect every one, and delete the obvious spammers. Then, each one that appears valid, I cross-check their IP to their location. Ones from China, Pakistan, and the obvious ones are deleted. The rest are accepted.

Many of these current spammers are from old registrations prior to implementing the policy. This one may be fresh, but you can't catch every one. That said, the moderation team is doing a great job at keeping the place clean with what we have to work with.....

I check in when I get on 1st thing in the morning. They're usually REALLY easy to spot, the usernames look like a chicken has been pecking on the keyboard, & the message-If its even in English-Will be something that makes absolutely no sense whatsoever-"The blue LOUIS VUITTON dog jumps over the LOUIS VUITTON moon during the 3 days of LOUIS VUITTON twilight", w/ obviously "Louis Vuitton" taking you apparently, to their website.

:eek: I believe we are being overrun by some kind of evil bots of some sort !

Every time I check in here , I see more and more of these h12jvk64vv accounts and yet none of em ever post anything . Why ?

Sorry for the crappy cell phone shot , I'm a tech challenged old guy ..

PrintScreen, then open MSPaint. Press CTRL + V, then Save as *.jpg or *.jepg. :)

I have a program that all i do is press PRINT SCREEN and it saves the file already in the folder i specify :) (I have it set to save as PNG files as they seem to look the best)

HOVERSNAP: http://anonym.to/http://files01.tech...erSnap_v08.zip

:thmbsp: Thank You for the help guys ! I appreciate the info and will try to get some decent screenshots with your method .

Now , To anyone in charge who reads this ;

:nono: I have been watching over the past several days since I first posted to this thread , and since March 5th when I posted , 375 new accounts have been created . NOT A ONE of them have posted anything !!!!! Every one of these new accounts have the same general properties , namely a weird string of numbers and letters that don't actually spell anything like a name or such . Now , I know what a Ham callsign looks like and know we have several users who use their Ham callsign as their screen name , but these aren't Ham callsigns . Something like "Wa2ise" IS a regular member who uses his Ham callsign . Got it . But what of the 375 new accounts ALL with names like the most recent " ui7p09q8t" ??? Is that , and the 374 others all with similar names , not worth looking into ?

I realize that most sites see ANY new accounts as a sign of growth and will never revise their membership lists when spammers and bots are banned . I really hope that ISN"T the case here , and that someone looks into this recent invasion of the no post letter/number accounts BEFORE something ugly happens to the site .

"Not worth looking into"? You do realize that you have just now glommed onto the subject of this thread. This is exactly why new registrations are being moderated, again, as of last October. We have been at this for a while, and have figured out a fair bit of it. Every new registration, let me repeat, EVERY NEW REGISTRATION, gets examined by one or another pair of eyes. In spite of this, occasionally, rarely, one gets by, and a post slips in. This is where the people who care about VK come in. The authentic member who spots a spammer reports the post, and the mod staff take care of it. That how all y'all help us keep this site valuable to you.

The Members List, in the toolbar, lists the count of members, and it changes by only a few per day, at most. There are three numbers under discussion: The count of genuine members, as reported by the Members List; The count of genuine members and banned members, as reported in the Forum Statistics section; the actual number of registrations that have been submitted, or User ID Number, as indicated by hovering your cursor over the name of the newest member, in the Forum Statistics section.

Here are the numbers, as of this post:

Members List: 35,910

Forum Stats: 40,658

ID number of newest member: 77,131

For a long time, the banned users were deleted, but the history was lost. As we got smarter, we began retaining these names and IPs, as an extra level of security. This allowed us to match up brand new spammer IDs with proven spammer IP addresses, or proven spammer email accounts. Our filter got much finer, so fewer and fewer spammers manage to get through. The only thing new about this spammer "invasion" is that it is attacking VK. I've been dealing with these people over at AK for a while, as AK's traffic levels make it a much more attractive target. I guess VK is getting more traffic, because these guys don't waste their time on unproductive targets.

As for your last sentence, above, I hope I'm misreading this, but I find it a bit unsettling. I'm not really sure where you are going with this, or what ugly something would happen to the site, but if you want to pm your concerns to me, I'll be happy to address them in more detail.

Thank You for the answer . My fear of "something ugly" is based in the fact that I know very little about the real workings of the hacking world , and when I see something suspicious I always fear the worst . I was specifically worried about why all these new weird accounts were signing up but not posting anything , were they "lying in wait" for some certain time to unleash some stupid friggin virus so as to screw up our computers ? , that's the kinds of fears I had . With your response , I know someone IS looking into the weird number/letter accounts and now I know I can post without the worry of some lousy virus buggin my computer . I appreciate you taking the time to answer my question and have a great day . :thmbsp:

Virus? No, spammers are all about the money. They get paid to post advertising on websites, you know, like the Air Jordan shoes, and the pro audio gear, purses, generic drugs. All counterfeits or knock-offs, usually from China.

The sad thing is, they do this, and spam email inboxes, because some morons actually click on them, and supply traffic to these spammers. It is estimated that spam email has a 3% penetration rate in their markets. That means that 3 people out of 100 are brain-dead idiots who click on ads for stuff they don't need, can't afford, and won't work. Just for fun, they might also get their identity stolen.

Yep, it's all about the money. We try to stay on top of things, but sometimes some slip through. That's where you come in. That "Report Post" button in your friend, and how you help us keep VK free from lowlife spammers.

Oh, and the reason they have no posts on all these IDs? Your ever-vigilant admins, of whom I am but one, are on this, several times each day, banning them as they arrive.

Thanks for the support, and be sure that you can hang out around here without worry.

:thmbsp:

I wonder if they are attracted to us because we use the word China a lot, usually in the context of "Crap from" but nevertheless...

Maybe we should be like on AK about Ebay, we can call it that "C" place:D

Hey buddy i didnt realise the last part of your handle is VINYL!!

Excellent :)