User Support Forum

There is a new spam message on the Maint release board, dated 8/12/06.

foxygramps wrote:There is a new spam message on the Maint release board, dated 8/12/06.

I've already notified the webmaster directly ... there have been three or four so far this weekend. <sigh>

I have been trying to help Zaphod with spam fighting here as of late.

This morning I deleted around 15 new users and 2-3 topics and posts. It is the one of the first things I do now, each morning.

We are continually trying to find ways to keep them off the board. Thanks for your patience!

Might be its time to screen all posts or replies prior to allowing them on the forums. Not something i'd like to see, but there has got to be some way to stop these bad (expelitive deleted by sender) guys.

I think the fix would be to ask for two pieces of information for verification prior to allowing new users:

1. Serial Number of Powerchurch
2. Name of church that PC+ is registered to.

Any visitor that would like to ask questions, would not be allowed on without a verification of email address, and affiliated congregation.

Just a thought.

foxygramps wrote:Might be its time to screen all posts or replies prior to allowing them on the forums. Not something i'd like to see, but there has got to be some way to stop these bad (expelitive deleted by sender) guys.

Unfortunately, that defeats the purpose of 'user support' on the forums, especially on weekends when alot of people ask questions.

By requiring a serial number and church information you prevent questions from those who are considering PC+ and are looking for comments from those who are already using it. Obviously not an easy solution to the problem.

We currently have it set up on the registration for the board to require visual confirmation before proceeding. That is the image with a series of blurry or crooked letters and numbers that you have to type in to proceed. This, for the most part, stops automated bots from registering.

That means all of the spammers that we are seeing are resulting from a person going through the registration process. Unfortunately, other than individually and manually approving all forum registrants before allowing them in, there isn't much more we can do, other than cleaning it up each morning. Manually approving each member means that the person joining over the weekend, while support is closed can not get help until we get in on Monday morning.

There are hacks available for this forum script that will automatically ban people, or remove their registration based on some common conditions, such as certain words in their profile, or a URL in the web site that is longer than a set number of characters, or contains a certain number of slashes... This, I fear, would still end up with some undeserving people getting canned. That's no good.

We will keep it under control until a better solution comes!

tborgal wrote:By requiring a serial number and church information you prevent questions from those who are considering PC+ and are looking for comments from those who are already using it. Obviously not an easy solution to the problem.

Tom,

you missed the second part of my post:

Any visitor that would like to ask questions, would not be allowed on without a verification of email address, and affiliated congregation.

Zorak wrote:We currently have it set up on the registration for the board to require visual confirmation before proceeding. That is the image with a series of blurry or crooked letters and numbers that you have to type in to proceed. This, for the most part, stops automated bots from registering.

That means all of the spammers that we are seeing are resulting from a person going through the registration process. Unfortunately, other than individually and manually approving all forum registrants before allowing them in, there isn't much more we can do, other than cleaning it up each morning. Manually approving each member means that the person joining over the weekend, while support is closed can not get help until we get in on Monday morning.

There are hacks available for this forum script that will automatically ban people, or remove their registration based on some common conditions, such as certain words in their profile, or a URL in the web site that is longer than a set number of characters, or contains a certain number of slashes... This, I fear, would still end up with some undeserving people getting canned. That's no good.

We will keep it under control until a better solution comes!

My sympathies ...

however, wouldn't a MySql database of just the current PC+ serial numbers and official church names allow you to do some automatic screening too ?? Then the system could look up the serial number, verify the official church name, then give an OK ??

That would certainly disallow the casual spammer as they would have no clue on what to enter.

We have got something in place now that should keep spam & offensive information from showing up in the registration of new members and posts on the forum. Let's see how it works out...

The filter thing is coming along well. I apologize to anyone who has gotten caught up in the filter, we are trying to hone down the list of words to filter on... Some spammers are still registering, but their links are to "Solid Oak Cabinets!" and what-not, so nothing offensive or phar-maceutical related...

Posting SPAM to this topic is just plain rude.