'Most online' record broken

[flatcat]

I've just noticed that the 'most online' record was broken on the 8th April this year with 300 people online (which beats 185 a few years ago)

I don't know how on earth it gets to this number (perhaps the bots have had a day trip!)

Damo

[Sylvia]

Can confirm it is indeed due to an upsurge in bot activity.

They are currently wreaking havoc with the registration system. Seems that quite suddenly they can all get around the captcha (jumbled lettering) even though I have it on the highest setting.

Overnight 20 new accounts were created. 19 spam and one real one. Bans are not totally effective at blocking them because they are able to use so many different IPs, servers, and email addresses.

I am seriously thinking about disabling the registration form permanently and asking people to write to me, personally, if they want to join the forum because the automated sign-ups have become so prevalent.

[flatcat]

Can confirm it is indeed due to an upsurge in bot activity.

They are currently wreaking havoc with the registration system. Seems that quite suddenly they can all get around the captcha (jumbled lettering) even though I have it on the highest setting.

Overnight 20 new accounts were created. 19 spam and one real one. Bans are not totally effective at blocking them because they are able to use so many different IPs, servers, and email addresses.

I am seriously thinking about disabling the registration form permanently and asking people to write to me, personally, if they want to join the forum because the automated sign-ups have become so prevalent.

Oh my goodness, it sounds like an absolute nightmare!

Thanks for all your hard work, Sylvia

Damo

[playmofire]

Sorry to hear about the problems, Sylvia.  There must have been an advance in bot technology recently.

[Knight Train]

I am seriously thinking about disabling the registration form permanently and asking people to write to me, personally, if they want to join the forum because the automated sign-ups have become so prevalent

This is probably your best option.  We had the same problem with another forum which was free, but too many spam-bots were getting in.  Now you have to send an email to register, get a reply from that email that asks for more information, send that reply back with proper information, then your account is created and account info is emailed to you and you must logon within 3 days or the account is deleted.

It's a lot of work, but we only register around 10 users per week and all the emails mean only interested people get accounts.

[Playmoholics]

What a nightmare! I don't understand why people would make so much spam 

[Indianna]

It's seems so strange that "bots" would register here where they also have to pay to join - do they actually send money to you Sylvia?  They probably just make a lot of excess work for you.  If they pay, I say let's have a campaign to encourage them to join and then we can have a party on their money!   

Seriously, though, I hope that you can find a procedure that works and keeps life simple for you.   

[Sylvia]

It's seems so strange that "bots" would register here where they also have to pay to join - do they actually send money to you Sylvia? 

Haha... they never get through to the next stage of paying the money because that approval email is not sent out automatically.

I check their answers to the registration questions first to see if they have answered them all - something that spammers NEVER do. Sometimes they fill the fields with random strings of characters but mostly they just leave them blank.

The bots must have some kind of program which searches the web for registration pages of forums. I doubt they are capable of reading all the fine print on registration agreements (such as our 5.00 Euro fee), nor would they bother to do so since they are not planning to follow the rules.

They are a nuisance, but I do get some small pleasure from knowing their efforts to disrupt our forum with useless junk are completely wasted. 

 

[Hadoque]

It's Battlestar Playmotica, "they" are among us 

[Sylvia]

It just gets more and more ridiculous each day.

My new registration system for the time being (i.e. until I find a better one):

http://www.playmofriends.com/forum/index.php?topic=8399.new#new

Maybe it will be more work, but at least I will only be dealing with genuinely interested people.