New user sign ups procedure review

As has been seen over the last couple of days from surplus01, a spammer can cause real hassle on this forum. It is too easy for someone to join and just flood the forum with spam. Is it possible that the sign up process cannot be completed "there and then"? In other words, the new user submits their details and the account then has to be approved by following a lin provided in an email to verify their address. If there is a waiting period and an email validation process, it may make these scum of the earth spammers think twice about signing up as even when you delete their posts, it still shows up on the list of last postings.

Mark

Not as ridiculous as the situation on our forum where the same person keeps registering under different names.

Noreen

I see yet another spammer has registered and is posting today .

Hasn't Justin dealt with the issue on your forum Noreen? I know certain facilities have been disabled from what I have read. Must confess, I don't really know what is going on there .

Mark

HI Mark

I thought it had been sorted but the same individual has now registered as yet another name.

Unfortunately (or maybe fortunately) they are not clever enough to disguise themselves & gave the game away quite quickly with the tone & content of their posts.

It seems also that no matter which of their multiple names they use, they can't resist having a dig at me either, so that gives them away too.

What they need to realise is that the vast majority of residents are totally fed up with their deceit & underhand tactics. The majority of us just want to get on with enjoying our little piece of Spain & do not want to be subjected to these ridiculous childish games.

Noreen

What about if new members are only allowed to make say one post until they are approved??

Justin

P.S. Paris is taking ages, she's finding it really difficult to type with her paws!

P.P.S. Noreen, I saw the "spammer" on your forum and disabled her account...AGAIN!!

I think you need to prioritise Justin, (sorry if that sounds provocative) and make more use of the members that are willing to help. With a forum of over 25,000 members, you really need more than 2 moderators to be effective. I also thought the PM activation for new users would be an automatic thing after X amount of posts, is this not the case? I have noticed that a few members have petitioned to have their PM's activated early, but surely if it is the t&c's that you have to make X amount of posts before you can send PM's, then I don't see what the issue is. Of course, if every member has to be approved before they can post on the forum, there is no need to restrict access to PM's as email addresses have been shown to be valid at signup. Other forums can take 2 or 3 days to process signups, so there is no need to have a general rush to proceed with the sign ups. At the end of the day, if the people are joining genuinely, they won't mind waiting a day or two. You could also have all new signups delivered to a different email address signup@eos or something like that and delivered to another mailbox, thereby making it easier to see how many new members there are?

Mark

Thanks Justin.

If there is anything I can do to help with whatever options you go for, please let me know.

Noreen

I think Mark's post was excellent.

Let's face it, Justin, it must take you ages to knock the spammers off here after they've been so annoying.  I can't recall how many times I've hit the spam button & notified EOS rather than post something as some tend to do. (I remember you asked us not to post anything but to advise you by hitting the spam feature). They tend to spam after midnight generally I have noticed (I'm online often till 2am doing allsorts of things, my friends in the USA & Australia are on messenger then).

Personally, I don't like new members to sign up just to flog their private stuff (Booboo, a brand new member, has just created FIVE threads just to flog stuff) or just to advertise their rentals on these boards then they are never seen again. I think if some members are kind enough to spend time helping others, never to get a reply, that isn't right. I've sent endless PMs in response to members getting in touch & only a few pop back to say thanks. Those who do are extremely grateful & never stop saying thanks. There's a distinct difference between using the forum & abusing the forum.  

 I believe we should all help each other & not use the forum as a spamming machine, which (whether some like it or not) it is becoming at times.

But there you go, it'll always be the same on forums, I guess.

Our Spammer is back again with yet another different name.

In the past week, the same person(s) used 6 different names to log in.

Noreen

I did notice that Noreen. Perhaps Justin can ban the user by blacklisting their ip address (assuming they have a static ip).

Mark

Mark

I think Justin has tried to do that but they still seem to be managing it somehow!

Noreen

Thanks Justin

We know that you are doing your best. You must be as fed up with it as the rest of us are.

Regards

Noreen