One Simple Request

[Welen]

Sorry about this, but can someone put a captcha on this board in order to post new topics. That way, those bots won't be able to keep advertising all the time. Thank you, and have a nice day.

[Rob]

Hi,

thank you for your message - the site already has anti-bot countermeasures to ensure scripts and bots aren't able to register. We have now readded the requirement for Admin validation of every single account before the user can post, and wil be monitoring new signups for the foreseeable future.

The spam that has been submitted recently has been from human beings cutting and pasting, which isn't possible to completely stop. Putting Captchas on every message before it can be posted wouldn't stop this, and would just add a level of inconvenience to genuine site members.

We manually remove all spam as soon as we see it, so hopefully it's not too inconvenient for you. If you come across any when you visit the site, we encourage you to report it using the exclamation mark icon on the right

Rob

[Rob]

Hi again,

the board's now been updated - I've added a more robust set of rules for registration with a brand-new style of CAPTCHA, which will hopefully stop the spambots once and for all. However, you can imagine the problems - as soon as a tech is invented to stop spam, spammers start developing software to counteract it - PHPBB certainly gets more than its' fair share of spambots.

The new system went live a couple of hours ago, and since then we've seen false registrations drop from around 15 per hour to nothing. As all registrations are manually approved before going live, you all won't have known how hard we work behind the scenes to keep the board clean and friendly... and battle a constant onslaught of nefarious programs trying to take advantage of our Internet success and drop links in to products ranging from pants to pills.

On an average day, we get over 160 registrations - each has to be checked manually to ensure it's a genuine person with an interest in the board, rather than a spambot or manual spammer. Hopefully, the changes will have put paid to most of the spambots, although we'll still have to deal with manual spammers - real people advertising their wares inappropriately. If you do spot anything, I encourage you to report it using the buttons above each post.

Thanks,

Rob