New Users Must Now Be Activated by Administrator

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web-ed
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New Users Must Now Be Activated by Administrator

Post by web-ed »

We've been under a massive spam attack the past few days, so I've been tightening up posting requirements as you can tell by the previous announcements. Unfortunately, this hasn't stopped spammers from signing up and then spamming the board, even though they have to use an email address which makes it easier for me to track them down (I have their IP address anyway). The problem is, some of these websites and email providers are located outside the U.S. and they're hard for me to strike back at, not to mention the fact that I just don't have the time to keep asking providers to yank down some spam site or revoke some spammer's email account.

Today I had the additional unpleasant surprise of seeing that we have about 100 new "members" who have joined in the past day or so. A glance at the ranks shows that most of these are obvious spambots who are presumably just waiting for their chance to flood the board with spam. Some of these may be blocked because I've banned their I.P. addresses that they used previously under other names, but I felt I had to do something before I've suddenly got 1000+ spambot "members" posting at will.

Therefore, I've had to go to the "nuclear option" - new registrations will have to be approved by me personally. I have never done this before, so I'm not sure how it works (I'm going to test it out now). Presumably, some or all of the spambots will be filtered out by my provider's anti-spam technology before their requests reach my inbox at CSR. However, I could be flooded there, or the filters could remove a new member request by mistake, so if you're waiting what seems an unusually long time for confirmation, send me another email.
-- Web-Ed
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