Spammer Epidemic

[KSMooniac]

Craig, with the recent influx of all the spammers/bots, I'm wondering if it might be prudent to add some sort of challenge to register as a member here? Either something like a captcha test, or perhaps a quiz that only a Mooney pilot might know? Failing that, maybe you could expand mod status to a few others to help whack some of them.

[Bob]

I was just thinking about this as well. At the point of registration, one can be asked "enter the tail number of your Mooney" "If you don't own a Mooney, what is the tail number of the last aircraft you have flown.

This will allow both current and future owners to register. I bet many spammers would just move on? The scipt would just verify that a "N" is the first letter in one of the two boxes to continue with the registration.

So simple it may actually work?

[FBCK]

Unless you have a Canadian registeration.

[Oscar Avalle]

or a german...

[Oscar Avalle]

but I like the idea of a challenge....

[OR75]

not sure how all this work ....

my suggestion would be for more than one trusted persons ( for Craig to designate) who would have admin rights to immediately delete any spams or spammers. i trust that those trusted persons wouldn't delete entries based on opinion ( like bladders vs. reseal or LOP vs. ROP.)

[BigTex]

Most forums will email the new member an authorization email that they have to click on to acknowledge. That might slow it down as well.

[danb35]

Oh the irony--spam on a thread discussing the spam.

[Oscar Avalle]

Yes, please let's do something. This is growing out of control.

[jackn]

How about 'charging' something. It doesn't have to be much. $10 or whatever you want to donate?

[1964-M20E]

Not saying we should go back to the old site but we less spam there.

Yes some type of catch to keep the automated types and most of the not pilot or airplane types out as well.

[fantom]

REQUIRE name, location, plane model & year, tail number. People not even indicating their gender when signing up, then requesting life and death advise is silly.

Having several moderators and/or charging a fee to sign up are worthy of consideration.

[Oscar Avalle]

I support the motion.

[timpercarpio]

Count me in.

[DonMuncy]

Me too!

[thinwing]

better shut down the whole web site now..these links they are posting are loaded with trojans and viruses...I am so sorry,btu it appears they have won for now..kpc

[29-0363]

Needs to work with Australian registrations!

[201er]

As the operator of another popular forum, let me offer some insight about dealing with spammers. It's good to have a bot captcha, however, inevitably they get cracked and once they are cracked for one forum, spam pours into all of them. A unique captcha is very important because it's the only way to keep the bots out. It's one of those things where you ask a question and then the user must think of the answer to enter and not read some slanty numbers. However, it shouldn't be just a single question. It needs to be a dozen questions that can be selected at random. This reduces the chances of someone scripting the answer into another bot and slows spammers down. This is also important in case folks couldn't get the answer for a specific question. Don't ask about their personal information cause you have no way of validating it. When you do come up with answers for the unique questions, make sure all variants of the answer could be accepted. For example if question is "what is three plus one" make sure to accept "four" and "4" and "Four" and "FOUR" or else someone with the caps lock on might have trouble joining. I'm not sure if this site is PHP, but I have programmed up a custom PHP script for my forum and can help you with one for this site. It's critical that it be unique and not off the shelf or else they'll crack it sooner or later. Lastly, it's good to have a warning system where users can easily click a button to flag spam for the moderator to remove. On a forum of this size it becomes impossible for a moderator to read every single post but the spam drivers users nuts. Be sure not to just delete but also ban IPs of all spammers. Better yet check their IP range and if it's from spamming countries like China, India, etc ban their entire network. Let me know if you need any more help with this.

[carusoam]

I have the near unique opportunity to read every post. Let me know if I can push a button to trash the extra garbage...

Best regards,

-a-

[Cabanaboy]

How about a challenge question like :

What city in Texas is the Mooney Factory located in: K_______

Pilots of America has a challenge question and it is:

Please fill in blank in the below statement:

We are the Pilots of _________.

Ans. (America)

or the members could be approved 1 by 1 based a short stmt requesting approval from admins, like Beech Talk.

[Hector]

On board as well. The spamming is getting ridiculous and I guarantee you it will get much worse. I'm all for some sort of verification or small fee to stop it

Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk HD

[johnggreen]

Like Fantom, I have long advocated that members be fully signed up with all personal information and allowed access only then.

I supposed I shouldn't say, I TOLD YOU SO!!

Jgreen

[1964-M20E]

well we need to fix this it is distracting

[OR75]

the mooneyspace front page looks more like a phamacy !

what about a verification with a code sent to a cell phone ?

to be honest, i do not like to put my personal information on the net....

[DaV8or]

I don't know, on the other hand, we could save a ton on generic boner pills! Maybe we just need some moderators to boot the spammers as they come up.