MaltaWildplants.com

MWP admin · Site Admin Joined: 05 Sep 2005 Posts: 3027 Location: Malta

Recentely, there were several poor people logging on the forum to submit spam of various kinds. Never let curiosity tempt you to click on the links. They have some commission on the number of clicks they obtain.

I have promptly deleted these users and their scum posts. Thanks for those who imm reported such cases.

As a measure to avoid this from happening (as much as possible), each newly registered user have to confirm his log-in by activating his account through his personal email. Usually, these poor guys do not want to reveal their proper working email, bcoz then ... read the last line!!! pale

If this would not be enough (they should be really hungry then) each account has to be activated by the Big Boss himself and...

(no kidding then because you will be reported to your local ISP!)

thin

MWP admin · Site Admin Joined: 05 Sep 2005 Posts: 3027 Location: Malta

I must say that the after the action mentioned above, spam posts has been reduced near to zero. They (or any guest) can still post messages in the free-for-guests topic called (How to use the forum)and for nethiquette, it should be left open for any questions of unregistered guests.

However some spamers are managing to sneak into the memberlist without registering!! Beyond my knowledge how they do it but it should be some secutiry issue in the forum coding structure. At least they cannot write posts as real members in the topics. I try to find a solution for that.

In the mantime sorry for any rude, unethical or unpolite links that these spamers advertise through there web link in their member profile. I always delete them as soon as possible.

I will keep using my weapons against Spam!
whdat

RB · Veteran member Joined: 12 Sep 2006 Posts: 757

Stephen, one easy fix is to password protect the entire /forum folder via .htaccess

Possibly you may even easily do this via your control panel, otherwise it's very easy to just drop in an htaccess file.

On the password prompt box, you would then just advise all of the password - You might think it defeats the point, but it does not - all these spam postings are automated, by bots - they don't have eyes!

Ronald

MWP admin · Site Admin Joined: 05 Sep 2005 Posts: 3027 Location: Malta

That passed from my mind but the forum entries would not be found in search engines then!

I need to upgrade and recode the forum to latest version since this is a known issue, it takes time, time is money, money = donations Wink