Disabling user registrations

[ragabash]

All,

I am in the process of cleaning up spam accounts. Since upgrading, I never got around to fixing CAPTCHA on user reg, and over 30K spammer accounts were registered in that time. The spam flowing through our mail server is horrendous.

I turned off registration to stem the tide of new accounts, so I can catch up.

My plan is to remove the last of the spam accounts, fix CAPTCHA, then turn on registration again.

[ragabash]

I've installed a captcha system for registrations, and turned registration back on. I'm going to watch the spammer user buildup for a few days. Please ping me here or on facebook if there are any issues.

[Serkanner]

30,000 accounts???

[Freakzilla]

I've installed a captcha system for registrations, and turned registration back on. I'm going to watch the spammer user buildup for a few days. Please ping me here or on facebook if there are any issues.

There are issues

[Freakzilla]

If you know of a way to ban and delete everyone that registered today that would be nice.

[Freakzilla]

BTW, I've disabled registration. I'll be months banning and deleting users.

[Freakzilla]

What might really help is if we figured out why I can't get an email to confirm registration.

[ᴶᵛᵀᴬ]

I think we shoud ban ALL the members registered on Saturday September 2nd (via the "prune users" function). My 2 cents

[ragabash]

Are spammers defeating the captcha?

[ragabash]

The reason why emails aren't going out is because of all the spam that the site used to generate. Most of the major email providers started blocking us. About six months ago, I started passing our outgoing mail through a mail filter our host provider runs, and we seem to have a much better standing in the antispam community. Also, now that I've pruned the user base of about 30k spam accounts, the volume of spam mail we send has gone down dramatically.

I've removed the directive that forwards our mail to the filter, and it seems like gmail is accepting mail from the server's main domain. I have to set up some MX SPF records in DNS for jacurutu, that should allow us to start sending mail again. I may be doing some testing over the next few days.

[ragabash]

I might have fixed the email problem. I just got an email confirming registration for a spam bot under the name 'GheSnicy'. Can anyone else confirm?

[ragabash]

Success! I just requested an account called 'beeftest3', and I got the email confirming the request!

Freak, I had to change the outgoing mail to noreply@jacurutu.com. One of the issues was that most mail services now won't accept mail that didn't originate from the reply-to domain. We used to have your account @yahoo.com there, and since the mail came from our server and not yahoo, everyone under the sun was blocking them. We should maybe add your email (or a mail someone checks) in the body of the message, just in case.

[ragabash]

Incidentally, I also just fixed that same problem at TaU.

[Freakzilla]

I'm getting Activate User Request emails now... thank you Rag

[Freakzilla]

Now, if only the links in the emails worked and didn't take me back to the login screen.

[Freakzilla]

At least it stops them from getting in.

[ragabash]

I'll check the links.

I also made the CAPTCHA image stronger. It may be too strong, but I want to watch it overnight.

[Freakzilla]

At least the forum will be usable... I guess I can just abandon my email.

[Freakzilla]

FYI Rag,

If I click "view user's profile" it takes me to the sign in screen.

If I click "activate user account" it says user doesn't exist.

[georgiedenbro]

Thanks for all your work on this.

[ᴶᵛᵀᴬ]

OK guys, I spent hours on splitting and deleting topics ...

NOTE FOR MY CO-ADMINS : There's a way to delete all a users posts when you ban them : go into ACP, then delete user AND posts OR prune them all. Unlike moderators who still need to individually go through their posts one by one, you are given the option to delete all of their posts. That's easy.

PS: new moderation tools are coming, tomorrow

[Freakzilla]

OK guys, I spent hours on splitting and deleting topics ...

NOTE FOR MY CO-ADMINS : There's a way to delete all a users posts when you ban them : go into ACP, then delete user AND posts OR prune them all. Unlike moderators who still need to individually go through their posts one by one, you are given the option to delete all of their posts. That's easy.

PS: new moderation tools are coming, tomorrow

[Omphalos]

I keep getting a jillion of those fucking 'no reply' emails every day. Anyway we can do a digest email?

[Omphalos]

Success! I just requested an account called 'beeftest3', and I got the email confirming the request!

I'm gonna start calling you 'beeftest' at thanksgiving.

[Omphalos]

Honestly, this onslaught is kind of recent. I used to weedwhack the user registrations, and in fact did it a few months ago and there were only a few new registrants. Maybe a page each time.

But after that, we got bombed. Not sure why.