THE BOARD IS UNDER ATTACK SO IT WILL BE LOCKED OCCASIONALLY

[brainman]

Hi everyone,

Unfortunately, this board had a massive attack by robots registering fraudulent members. I had to disable the board for a while this evening (Wednesday Evening Central USA). If this continues, I might have to disable it again. I apologize for the inconvenience this causes to all of us.

[In]

Grrrrrrrr -

[brainman]

We continue to have "people" who register with usernames like "TRTRTRTRTR...". I have disallowed some of those names but robots can generate them faster than I can delete them .

[maryaz]

Hi Brainman; Someone helped me over the weekend with my new registration here. I think it was you. Still don't know what happened. We got it fixed.

I want to let you know what I saw. After we got it straightened out I was going to post. I saw one of the 'newest member' listed on the front of the forum. It was one with weird letters. I recognized those as I have seen them before. It was spam. I did click on this one and the profile actually had the word 'porn' in a website link it showed. It was obviously not a desireable link.

I go to one forum that gets spammers and they try to just delete when they get by. They keep up well. I never see spam tho, on any of a few other forums that I use. Therefore, there must be some kind of software to stop the bulk of it.

There was one forum I went to that had no active Administrator and for long time it managed to continue but then these spammers came until it just took over and the whole think went down. It was sad because it was an illness board and many good people. Why the hospital that set it up wouldn't take care, I don't know.

You may know all about this but since it kept happening I wanted to be sure and make a suggestion. I know I couldn't figure out if this was the new or old forum the way some of the posts read. If this is the new, try to figure out what you can do. I go to a couple proboard forums that are styled just like this and maybe they know what to do. They have a help forum for Proboards. I could ask the Administrators.

Didn't mean to get so long but would like to see you stop the spammers as it can scare people off. Again, I like the format this way. Easy to get around and find things and it friendly whereas some message board seem cold. Best of luck and keep the spammers out.

[pbj11]

Jim,

You must be one quick little bunny to delete these so fast. I never see any and so dearly wish I could be of more help to you.

PBJ

[brainman]

Maryaz, yes, I am the guy who helped you with the registration problem (which I still do not understand). I do know of a mod that can keep people from posting links and the will be included in the new forum.

As of this morning, all new registrations have to be approved by one of the administrators. I hate having to do this because a lot of people who need help register and almost immediately post their question or story. This will delay them and they might go somewhere else. But I hope this is just a temporary thing.

PBJ, it helps to know the "secret" administration functions. I can delete dozens of members and their posts with just a few clicks of my mouse . There is just one thing that I wish I had access to: the IP address of members who have not posted. I can get the IP address once someone has posted but that is too late to prevent what happened to maryaz who came across a link to a porn site.

[umbleweed]

Why is the board under attack?

[brainman]

I have no idea why the board is under attack. I just know that when I first posted this message some bot had targeted us. Maybe some unhappy member that had been banned wanted to create problems. Who knows why spammer want to spam.