MEMBERS - or are they?

[Craig]

I've noticed a few times, again today when logging on, that on the list of members on line that there are a few "odd" names. I can't access the profile and on the members lists the names / profiles dont appear.

Names are - Inoffheerve, TagreeBugguro, lonneclammefe and phargogma. Strange names for fellow sex workers I think that you'll agree.

Who are these people and how are they getting onto this site as members.

Its worrying if none members are reading the posts etc, especially the ones about bad clients.

[Ben Manchester]

Hi Craig,

The forum constantly receives fake account requests from spam bots, sometimes as many as 30 in a day. Although these fake accounts show in the online list, these users do not have sufficient privileges to be able to view forum content or send messages.

This happens because the forum software sees anyone who has submitted a registration as a member, even though their access permissions haven't been granted yet.

No need to worry though, no-one can view forum content until I have specifically approved them, which doesn't happen until after I have verified their phone number and advertising. I clear the spam accounts out several times a week.

Hope this explanation helps

[Craig]

Thanks for the explanation.

[Ben Manchester]

Spam registrations increased significantly over December and January, to more than 60 on most days.

Moderating these registrations has been taking a lot of my time, as I review all registrations manually before allowing access to the forums, as well as causing a strain on forum resources and the email server.

I've introduced some automated registration checking that uses a combination of a timer, honeypot field and IP checking against spammer blacklists in order to cancel spam registrations before they get to the moderation stage.

Testing over the last week has shown a significant reduction in successful spam registrations getting to moderation stage and there doesn't appear to have been a significant impact on website performance so far, though please do let me know if you experience any unusual slow downs.

To reiterate, spam registrants could not access content or message members as they still require manual approval by me, this update was just about reducing the number of spam registrations getting as far as moderation stage.