Spam Bot Accounts Deactivated

[Worker 11811]

In the last 24 hours we have had an flood of spam bots on the Melody and the Fur Den in which more than 30 bogus accounts were created in the two forums.

I have had to go down the list of newly registered accounts and deactivate many of them en masse.

I made every effort to ensure that I have not deactivated the accounts of legitimate members of these forums but it is possible that I have made a mistake.

If I have deactivated the account of any new member of Melody or the Fur Den by accident, please do not take it personally.
We do not delete accounts. We only "deactivate" them. This way we can recover in the case of a mistake.

If you send a message to me or one of the other administrators we will restore your account as soon as possible.

Thank you for your patience.

Worker 11811

[Walter]

Excellent work, thanks. I'm sure that new "real" members that are deactivated by accident will resurface and thus easily reinstated.

[Worker 11811]

I have a list of several "tip-offs" that indicate whether an account is a spammer or not. There are about a half dozen.
I try to look for at least two tip-offs before I deactivate an account but I often see three or four of them on the average spammer.

I deactivate them as soon as I detect them. I let them sit idle until the end of the month.
If somebody sends me a message telling me that they are a real person I can reinstate the account with just a few mouse clicks.

If, by the end of the month, I have not heard from the owner of the account I delete them completely.

I always try to err on the side of caution. I'd rather let one or two spammers slip through than catch a real person. This is why you see the occasional spammer on the forums.

So, if you see a spammer, you can report the post. The next time a moderator comes on, he will see a big on the screen and they will know they are supposed to check in to the problem.

The problem is that this isn't an exact science. It's all based on human judgment.

So, if a real person gets caught in the fray, don't be afraid to let us know. We'll do what we can to get your account back in the ranks.

[sweaterdress]

Thanks for all the work cleaning up after bots leave they're droppings about the place.

I guess that's why many systems now not only validate email addresses on registration, but also use capcha's - those wierd images of text that only a human is meant to decipher and then type the charcters in a box. Hopefully it's not machine readable and only a real human can pass that point.

We're having to use captcha technology on some sites that have contact forms now.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Captcha" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;



Naomi.

[White Fox]

SD, our system uses it now too. I think that most problems here go back to two ... I won't call them guys!

These dumb goofs go through all of that to register. The Captcha for instance. Take the time to set up a new email or figure which ones are banned here, and not banned. Figure out a new name to use because old ones are banned. Type out a message. And - very seldom does it even last long enough for more than one or two totally disinterested (in the message) members to see it. Hopefully at some point they will get the point as to how useless this really is!

In the mean time....

W