New user registrations

Questions, comments, etc about UMassHoops.com.
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MikeUMA
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New user registrations

Post by MikeUMA » Mon Jun 25, 2007 11:10 pm

If you ever take a look at the board's index page, you might notice the "newest registered user". If you've been watching it for the last few months, it's some user name of complete jibberish. If you click on the name, you'll see more jibberish, with a link to some spam site.
(Do all of us a favor, don't click on the link to the site. You're just encouraging them that their tactics work.)

Spammers have really started to carpet bomb my server with new registrations, and right now I have no way of stopping them. I got 40 registrations today alone, and they all appear to be spammers.

If you want to register as a new user, chances are 99.9% that I won't approve your registration, unless you contact me and specifically ask for approval. E-mail me. The address is on the front page of this site. Not the board, this site. And if you've read this far, you're probably legit and will take the extra 30 seconds to do it. If not, you're never going to get approved, and the farthest you'll get is seeing your registration name in the memberlist.

Somebody with some free time: please scour the web and look for a way to disable all new registration attempts in a phpBB message board. I'm at the end of my rope on this one.

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Rocks22
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Post by Rocks22 » Tue Jun 26, 2007 2:08 pm


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MikeUMA
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Post by MikeUMA » Tue Jun 26, 2007 10:02 pm

Thanks for the research Rocks. Another 41 registrations today, and 58 minutes left to go. :evil:

JJ, what about this:
http://www.phpbb.com/community/viewtopic.php?t=283054

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jj
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Post by jj » Wed Jun 27, 2007 7:45 am

I'll try out the invitation only mod Mike. I hadn't seen that one yet. A lot of the ones in that list posted by Rocks are for shit. I've applied a number of them and they don't work.

Jeff93
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Post by Jeff93 » Mon Jul 09, 2007 8:06 am

I belong to another message board for fathers of multiples and they are haveing the exact same problem. Over there, there are like 40 active users, and they are getting 40-50 "registrations" per day.

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jj
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Post by jj » Mon Jul 09, 2007 8:44 am

Jeff, we were able to turn off new registrations all together by simply inputting "*" into the banned usernames list. That disallows all new registrations, which is essentially what we were looking to do. You can turn it off at the drop of a hat by removing the asterisk from the banned list to allow someone to register.

It's a pain in the ass, but nowhere near as bad as having to wipe all of the bogus automated sign-ups.

kemipa
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spam control

Post by kemipa » Thu Jul 26, 2007 9:22 am

I've been playing around with bbprotection:

it's a new service that does a decent job of preventing spam. it's free and community-driven, supposedly improving results over time. Check it out:

http://www.bbprotection.net/

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MikeUMA
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Post by MikeUMA » Mon Sep 03, 2007 7:28 pm

If you want to register for the board, here's what you have to do:

E-mail me at webmaster at umasshoops dot com. (If you're reading this, you know how to put that into a real e-mail address.)
Ask to be registered on the board.
Tell me what user name you want.
You will be registered to the e-mail address you're sending from.
Finally, tell me why you want to post on the board. Tell me something about UMass, so I know you're for real.

Note: I'm not able to process requests right away as they come in. Please be patient!

PS: Thanks to JJ for his efforts trying to thwart these pathetic spammers.
Last edited by MikeUMA on Fri Jan 17, 2014 2:11 pm, edited 2 times in total.

Marty Peretz
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users

Post by Marty Peretz » Wed Jan 02, 2008 3:02 pm

so how many actually legit uders does the site have? It says 1400+ last I checked, but if so many are fake, how many do we really have? Just curious.

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jj
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Post by jj » Wed Jan 02, 2008 3:03 pm

We've weeded out the fakes. The current user list is legit.

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MikeUMA
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Post by MikeUMA » Wed Jan 02, 2008 3:57 pm

We were getting over 50 fakes per day when JJ finally put a stop to it. We'd probably have over 3000 by now if he hadn't stopped 'em and cleaned the bad ones out.

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BullmooseGEO
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Attention Administrators!!!

Post by BullmooseGEO » Wed Feb 20, 2008 8:36 pm

Looks like fake users are setting up accounts again. :evil:

The username of the latest registred user is "rasktrutka" written in Cyrillic (that's why it looks like gibberish to all you folks that don't have Cyrillic encoding enabled by default) which is Russian code-kiddies slang for "search engine optimization"...

In the profile of this user is a link to the Russian website for the search engine optimization program that was most likely used to obtain this account. It is interesting that the company that wrote this bot looks legit. They list their address, telephone and fax numbers on the website, and their other products (some real estate-related tools, some webtools) They also seem to be in business of writing custom software... Anyway, the bot's English name is 'webpopular.' The Location field in the profile is "Russia" and both Occupation and Interests are listed as "search engine optimization program"...

I hope you guys can deal with this problem quickly and efficiently...
"When in doubt, use brute force." -- Ken Thompson

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MikeUMA
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Post by MikeUMA » Sun Mar 02, 2008 11:57 am

Looks like JJ took care of it. Thanks JJ.

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jj
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Post by jj » Sun Mar 02, 2008 1:59 pm

All good!

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MikeUMA
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Post by MikeUMA » Wed Mar 12, 2008 2:42 pm

Hopeful registrants: I've received a bunch of new user requests lately. I've been a lazy ass in getting around to processing them, but I will do so soon. Hopefully tonight as I listen to Charlotte/Rhody.

Thanks for your patience, and understanding that I have to do it this way.

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