Textual confirmation installed

[Nick]

As of today all new registrants will have to answer a simple question to prove that they are human . . . this should stop any automated or 'bot' signups, which account for the vast majority of spam signups for bulletin boards.

The software notifies me whenever there is a spam signup denied. Of course it won't stop malicious human signups, but these represent a small minority. The board will continue to be monitored on a daily basis to remove any of these.

[ash]

It will be interesting to see if it works. It's funny how they almost always manage to hit the Stuff Wanted forum.

Has the TAASC been relieved of all duties? He did a a great job during your jaunt.

Ash

[Nick]

. . . is on his holidays and has been in the T&T with us tonight.

I trust he will see fit to resume his duties when he returns to his post - but hopefully the spam bashing side of it will be much less irksome.

The Textual Confirmation routine has already mailed me notification of at least fifteen attempted and failed spam signups today, so it seems to be working well.

[Silkie]

I've only deleted one spammer (tonight) since this was introduced. I've kept the two links, from his profile and his first post, since they were quite interesting.

One was a page with thousands of words presumably intended to interest search engine spiders while the other contained instructions on including a link in blog posts to gain some unspecified reward. He'd also included references to boats in his profile and post.

Not a spam bot.

PS - Don't bother trying again.

[Silkie]

I had a sudden intuition (I'm not as quick on the uptake as I used to be) and sure enough, he'd started a Yotblog and made two posts which are now history, needless to say.

PS - Are you back on back up duty Nick?

[Nick]

.
I have set up Textual Confirmation on four boards now and am currently seeing over 150 spam signups a day failing . . . wonderful, wish I had discovered this years ago.

Anyone else reading this who has a phpBB2 board bothered with spam, I'm your man for a reasonable fee . . .

PS Dave, could you get us a cooker hood and bring it up this weekend if I peruse the website and find a suitable one?

[Silkie]

Sadly I have been committed to a "family weekend" and probably won't be up until a fortnight hence but would be happy to do so then if it's not too late.

[Nick]

but anyway the weather is not looking so hot and I won't be back from Wales until Sat. night.

Have emailed you more specifically . . .

Let's plan a major expedition (Tobers?) for a fortnight hence . . .

[claymore]

Jings but I'm relieved ye didnae hae yon texterliser when I joined - May never have made it this far....