New Registration is Turned off

Post by **MSG Commander** » Wed Feb 24, 2021 2:42 am

We've just received a bit of an onslaught of new spammers registering for the site and leaving comments in their "Activity" feed. I've turned off new registration and am deleting these accounts. I don't know how long registration will be off but probably at least a day or two while I investigate.

Post by **MSG Commander** » Wed Feb 24, 2021 9:36 am

Update: I've deleted about 700 accounts, mostly obvious spammers, and also anyone who I thought was suspicious and almost everyone who registered within the last week or 10 days who just never commented anything.

Each one was manually registered. I know this because when someone joins the site they get a confirmation email that they have to respond to before they can post anything... so it's not bots it's legit butt holes creeping on the "Activity" portion of their user profile.

I need to think overnight on what the next step will be re: opening back up registration.

Even though I'm not active on the site anymore, I want to maintain the integrity of this community. That is goal number one.

I'll give another update tomorrow or the day after when I've figured out how to (hopefully) prevent this in the future.

Nemomon · Post by **Nemomon** » Thu Feb 25, 2021 2:40 am

I kinda think that they still are here. Some of the active usernames still do sound like they would belong to bots.

Post by **jesusalva** » Thu Feb 25, 2021 2:58 am

[quote=40340]

I kinda think that they still are here. Some of the active usernames still do sound like they would belong to bots.

[/quote]

Several of them; Just give a quick glance at online list :b

(By the way, I first noticed that when I couldn't see anyone I recognize on active member list)

Post by **MSG Commander** » Thu Feb 25, 2021 9:53 am

I was afraid at first that some new people had somehow still registered after I disabled it, but it looks like they actually joined within the last 2-5 days but have just now decided to start posting stuff...

Anyway thank you for calling them out. If more pop up over the next few days I'll just keep deleting them until things settle down.

EDIT So it looks like literally hundreds of people joined in the last week or so but never posted anything so they slipped under the radar. I'm finding them now as I dig deeper and deleting every one of them because they all have really suspicious user names.

Nemomon · Post by **Nemomon** » Sat Feb 27, 2021 3:27 am

Hmm... I have noticed that the forum does not update to the unregistered users. It looks as if unregistered users would browse a backup of the site instead of exploring its live version.

Post by **MSG Commander** » Thu Mar 18, 2021 3:46 am

So it turns out, when I turned off registration in order to clean up all the spam comments etc... I forgot to ever turn registration back ON.

So it's on now, and I'll be watching the next couple days/week to see if we get flooded with more wannabe spammers, or not. (Hopefully not)

Post by **MPG Annihilator** » Thu Mar 18, 2021 5:47 am

Lol, that might be why we haven't gotten any new member introduction messages in a while xD

Post by **jesusalva** » Fri Aug 23, 2024 5:23 pm

I’ve turned off new registration. I have no idea when I'll enable it again, so on the meanwhile, anyone seeking a new account should email their intended username to this site's support email and I'll try to get it set up within 48 hours or so.

Apologies for the inconvenience.

(The site's support email can be found on the Privacy Policy)

Victar · Post by **Victar** » Sat Aug 24, 2024 7:56 pm

I'm sorry the spambots brought it to this (again).

One option I can think of is to keep new registration turned off, and prominently display the changed instructions for creating a forum account somewhere on the site.