An Update On Spammers

Thanks to everyone who's been flagging the increased number of spam posts/accounts that have been popping up in the last few weeks. I guess spammers make New Year resolutions too.

I'm putting some broader IP ranges in for some of these bans, as many of them are abused by dozens of spam accounts. If anyone happens to get caught up in the crossfire on these, please let me know via the TAY contact form. I'm trying to do my due diligence to make sure no legitimate users get pulled down, but a couple might get sucked in by accident.

Well, it looks like about 300 new TAY accounts have been registered in just the first 17 days of 2011.  Many of them are obvious spammer accounts (based on either username or website link), e.g.:

www.turns-all-year.com/skiing_snowboardi...ction=profile;u=6603 ;
www.turns-all-year.com/skiing_snowboardi...ction=profile;u=6605 ;
www.turns-all-year.com/skiing_snowboardi...ction=profile;u=6609 ;
www.turns-all-year.com/skiing_snowboardi...ction=profile;u=6614 ;
www.turns-all-year.com/skiing_snowboardi...ction=profile;u=6616 ;
www.turns-all-year.com/skiing_snowboardi...ction=profile;u=6617 ;
www.turns-all-year.com/skiing_snowboardi...ction=profile;u=6618 ;
www.turns-all-year.com/skiing_snowboardi...ction=profile;u=6627 ;

The above is just based on a very quick look, manually incrementing through a few profiles by user number. It looks like another invasion of spammer accounts like happened in 2007.  I'd assume that most of the 300 new accounts are spammers. Probably best to delete any such accounts proactively, right?

Thanks Amar -- yes, I've been deleting a lot of those proactively and putting bans in place when appropriate. It seems to have stemmed the tide a bit.

Marcus, you seem to have one persistant spammer dogging you.  Or is it just one...?

Can you make membership have to go through a Mod or yourself or answer a simple question like “What are dynafiddles?” or “Name a splitboard company” or “Why do you want to join” in a non-offensive manner of course.

I know nothing of these matters but mod approved accounts, provided there are not too many, should be easy enough to manage.

Certainly seems to be a spam topic most mornings.

Thanks guys -- no, it's not just one. There are many spammers who roll through.

The current forum software doesn't really allow for the kind of Q&A that some sites have. I can make it membership-by-approval, which I've thought about, but it means a different type of admin workload. Not sure which is better yet.