More Tightening of Registration Procedures

[Justin B.]

As bad as I hate two I have been forced to suspend new registrations to the forum  The previous step to allow user registration with admin approval kept the bogus users off the board but with over 100 registration requests daily (99% being bogus) I was beginning to inadvertently delete/reject valid requests.  This has pi$$ed off a few prospective members who have become victims of my "twitchy" trigger-finger.

I have posted a "sticky" advising applicants to e-mail the board administrator with requested user information and I will then manually add them.

We'll see how this works for a while...

[darrylri]

Sorry to hear about how much hassle this has become.  Is it not possible to put a CAPTCHA puzzle on the registration page?  I find that this gets rid of all of the spambot registrations on the Vintage BMW website.

[darrylri]

From just an hour of my site logs last night:

CAPTCHA      11/06/2011 - 21:58      user_register post blocked by CAPTCHA ...      guest      
CAPTCHA      11/06/2011 - 21:24      user_register post blocked by CAPTCHA ...      guest      
CAPTCHA      11/06/2011 - 21:18      user_login post blocked by CAPTCHA module: ...      guest      
CAPTCHA      11/06/2011 - 21:18      user_register post blocked by CAPTCHA ...      guest      
CAPTCHA      11/06/2011 - 21:14      user_login post blocked by CAPTCHA module: ...      guest      
CAPTCHA      11/06/2011 - 21:14      user_register post blocked by CAPTCHA ...      guest      
CAPTCHA      11/06/2011 - 20:46      user_login post blocked by CAPTCHA module: ...      guest      
CAPTCHA      11/06/2011 - 20:46      user_register post blocked by CAPTCHA ...      guest

[Justin B.]

What criteria does this utility use to whack the bums?  I had it originally set to auto registration where somebody would register and then have to respond to an activation e-mail within a set time period.  That worked for several years and I was then forced to start manually looking at all registrations and "approving" them - too much margin for error.

So far I have had one registration request in the last 12 hours where I would have normally had about 50 in the queue to approve - I can live with that!

[darrylri]

The software I use lets me install modules to provide other functionality.  One of them is a CAPTCHA module.  CAPTCHAs are those pictures with distorted text that you have to type back into the computer.  

(CAPTCHA = Completely Automated Puzzle to Tell Computers and Humans Apart; reminds me of the old PC-MCIA cards for laptops, PC-MCIA - People Can't Memorize Computer Industry Acronyms.)

If they pass the CAPTCHA, the request goes through; if they don't, it doesn't.  

If you use the reCAPTCHA utility, you also help to correct copyright-free books to make them available on the internet:  
http://www.google.com/recaptcha

[2dogs1cat]

That's a great idea using distorted pictures in the registration process, to bad I've already registered otherwise I would use these photos:



:^)

[montmil]

That's a great idea using distorted pictures in the registration process, to bad I've already registered otherwise I would use these photos:

Just in from a Monday Happy Hour/s... So what's wrong with the photos? Look fine to me. [smiley=beer.gif]

Monte

[Bob_Roller]

Monte, is the funeral home giving away beer in the evening now

[Bengt_Phorqs]

Justin, my bride, Mrs. Phorqs, is the Webmeister for the local BMW group and also the IT Director for her company.  They manage something like 3 MM registered users.  I'll ask her if she has any ideas to manage the spam stuff.  -Mike

[Justin B.]

We have the spam managed but what is happening is bogus users register (if it's easy) and then post spam!  I would imagine a good number of them are coming from machines that might have a virus of some kind.  But, any suggestions are welcome...

[Bengt_Phorqs]

Justin, talked to the Missus and she said you were doing just what you ought to do.  I hate that stuff though because I can never read them.