Spam and registering - Dartmoor Letterboxing Archive

Dartymoor

2016-01-04 20:05:22

I installed an automatic spamblocker that seems to have successfully prevented the spambots from registering, just quietly doing its job. Below is a picture of the admin panel's user log.

One notification was shown today, which was an apparently genuine user (UK, sky email), which I've activated.

All the blocked registrations do look like they were correctly identified.

I think it might be nice to remove the manual activation at some point. What do you both think about that?

(There might have been an issue with emailing notifications - because I don't have access to the DNS for this domain, I've been using my usual email address as the send-from and I think because that's a gmail address, it gets flagged as spam since it's not coming from one of their servers. .I've made some changes tonight so it comes from another of my domains (doesn't matter where it comes from, just as long as the user can reply back). This is just for the automated mails by the way)

~~[img="~~http://i.imgur.com/pj6AmYr.jpg" alt=""]

Dartymoor

2016-01-04 20:17:20

Ok, following a brief chat with Nik on facebook...

I have changed registering from needing manual activation by an admin to email verification.

User registers. Forum sends an email. User clicks on the link on the email. They are then activated and returned to the board.

I have tested this and it works (and so does the new user email, hurray!)

I'll keep an eye for a while.

Nik - KOTM

2016-01-06 13:04:16

Your test bunny seems to have worked - though it did send it to my spam folder.... That has been rectified

Dartymoor

2016-01-28 09:23:52

Quick update:

Over the past few weeks between 5 and 40 new accounts are created by spambots each day.

The new anti-spam tool blocks and bans all of them, apart from 1 or 2 per day that slip through.

These are emailed to admins, and I have been manually deleting the spambots.

Genuine users: We've had two in the past couple of weeks register.

Dartymoor

2016-02-28 21:14:54

Okay, clearly quite a few spambots are getting through. (I've been manually banning one or two accounts each day, and both Nik and I have had to clear up after one's gone onto post)

I've replaced the text captcha with Sortables, which apparently is better at fooling the automated bots.

This produces a list of three tors and two non-tors, and asks the user to move the tors to the right. My logic is that every letterboxer will know Saddle Tor, Fur Tor and Hound Tor. (I'm open to being told wrong!)

Let's wait and see how it works out. :)

~~[attachment=0]~~dlb_reg.jpg[/attachment]