[ChicletPrime]

Janepn4242 and Janepn1750

• registration received twelve-ish hours apart, using two slightly different yet tangentially sequential gmail accounts. 
  
• Nuked on sight. 
  

EDITOR'S NOTE:
It went something like this:

[Coldsaturn]

All I'm hearing is that this forum is active enough that it's attracting spam on a weekly basis <3

[ChicletPrime]

Yeah, stop trying to charge through your titles, you're attracting the wrong kind of attention. If I wanted you to hustle on a corner, I'd have given you a clothing allowance.

Today's offerings to the volcano god:

Janepn3466, Janepn7086 and RobertbiotO. Jane is super lonely and really needs a home apparently.

[Coldsaturn]

I hope we're not making it worse by naming them, something like "oh X forum is using the keywords associated with our spambot, they must be falling for it, let's send more" (I'm humanizing random algo searches, but I wouldn't be surprised if it was like that).

Isn't there some plugin that you could use to avoid bots? Or some double check to validate/make an account that would make it more difficult for them?

[ChicletPrime]

well, i have a technical problem and a human one re/spam and spam accounts

the technical one is that i cannot seem to get this forum to email me when a new registration happens. i have this problem on the "master" website this runs under and i have yet to solve it - i've tried a few times to figure out what the issue is but as of yet have not managed to figure it out (i put about 65% effort into it at the time). as i expect(ed) people to contact me somewhere along the timeframe of "never", i just let the issue do a swan dive into my unconsciousness.

however when i installed this forum and registration suddenly required a working email system, i did A Bad Thing and just turned registration notification off. the forum just allowed people to make an account with no checks and immediately have access. and we ran for MONTHS without that being a problem.

now, suddenly, after that first wave of spam accounts, its a problem. so since i still do not know what the issue is with sending email at the host level, i locked it all back down so registrations jam up in the queue awaiting authorization. so now i have to log into the admin panel each day to see if anything's queued up - not a heartache, but something i have to remember. because email will not send, i can't even set up the board to send a confirmation email back to the originating address which is another way this might be handled.

is there a plugin to auto purge bots using some sort of algorithm or ai or whatever? probably. but i wouldn't trust it and the forum is not being hammered by the things honestly. we have one legit other user (we talked briefly on tumblr so when i saw the registration i approved it) and one i thought might be a bot but might not be, so i approved them but stuck them in Probation-ary hell and they have yet to post so not sure what's going on there, and now a handful of illegal russian hot singles looking for boyfriends in our area.

finally, i kind of enjoy janitor duties. sweep sweep sweep. trash. dusts hands.

[ChicletPrime]

Today's submissions: Janepn6017 and Janepn316.

She multiplies like a multiplying thing.

[Coldsaturn]

Can we just auto ban "janepn"? Seems like a random enough name that it shouldn't be a problem for future possible users.

[ChicletPrime]

i am not sure! lets go teach ourselves some more things about myBB code, i suppose.

[ChicletPrime]

Okay, we've had three more attempted registrations over the last two days - Janepn7931, Janepn6524 and Janepn4383.

I have meticulously read the BAN stuff you can do in MyBB and have tentatively chosen to just disallow this particular user name, instead of trying to block an IP entirely.  I will report back on success when success has been achieved.

[Coldsaturn]

Let's see if the next round of spam users will choose "Janenp" as username lol