Registration trouble - Spambots & Co.

[Nightfall]

hi there,

short story: I read a post here in the introduction thread about "bus recently being short on new member"; got curious, googled for other self injury boards (which ranks higher on google than bus), looked at the memberlists of another board and of bus -

sorted it by joined date - descending.

now my interest was no more in "do new members pick other boards due to google" but in what the heck is that ???

Because on the page with the most recent bus members, one part has entered "spammer" in the location field ... pretty obvious

the other part of those has links to obviously sexual adult content ... I haven't followed the links, but the names of the links are telling it and are pretty offensive...

I dunno what can be done about, but I thought I'd tell about this pretty random observation.

Guess registration-bots are causing this ... I haven't registered since three years, so I dunno if that's implemented here - but a bot-protection is something worth thinking about, if not implemented yet (and possible on this kinda board)

EDIT: And aside from the issue of the content prolly being offensive to some people - unless you have a good antivirus protection I would abstain from "testing" those links in the profiles !!

N.

[Laura]

We've always had a lot of spammers. Most of them get deleted before you even see them!
If you find any that we haven't deleted yet, please use the "Write a new report" link at the top to inform us of them so we can delete them. We don't want those people or their links.

Thanks.
Laura

[Nightfall]

We've always had a lot of spammers. Most of them get deleted before you even see them!

okay wasn't aware of that ....thanks for the clarification

[b3autifu2l37]

also there's a link in the welcome wagon forum about "would be spammers" or something. if you find one, copy their username and enter it onto the thread and someone will spam splat it for you. they're usually really good about doing this and get it done really quickly

[swirlish]

The reason some of them have "spammer" in the location field is because an admin have deactivated them. We usually put spammer or spam or whatever in the location field, because that way it shows up on the memberlist and it's easier to know who's been splatted and who hasn't.

[silent_scream]

as it will get confusing and probably not picked up on.

People...have..been..doing..it..that..way..for..a..while,.Would..it..be..worth..it,..to..post..there..saying
not..to..post..there?

no..space..bar!!!!!!!lol

[swirlish]

Actually, ignore me, I was wrong. Didn't know the thread had changed.

I'll go edit/delete my previous post now.

[Spidey]

i think that bot-protection mechanisms have been discussed in the past, but i think the idea was shelved because a lot of the bot-detect mechanisms right now rely on the wierd "type this random combination of letters and numbers you see in this image to confirm you are a human" mechanism, which is a disadvantage to those who have visual accessibility issues.