Fast Tracks

Our forums have been under constant attack by automated posting robots for quite some time now. The objective of these posting robots is to post as many messages as possible in public forums with the hope that the messages will be indexed by search engines such as Google and Yahoo!, which in turn will send more web traffic to the spammers website. It is truly a despicable practice.

We have implemented a number of defenses against these spamming robots, but one by one they seem have figured out ways around them. As a result we are now unable to keep ahead of them and truly offensive messages have been recently posted to our forum.

So it is with regret that I have had to give in and turn on our ultimate defense measure by turning off 'guest' posting, which means only registered members can post to our forums now. I have also turned on registration review, which means that new members are only granted an account after we have reviewed their application.

I truly dislike the idea of having to close guest posts and requiring reviewed registrations, but it seems we have little choice right now.

If you are a registered member, this will have no effect on you, other than the need to log into the forum in order to post a new message. Unregistered members will need to register before they can post messages. Everyone will still be able to read posted messages.

What a shame...

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Cheers!

Ron Warris
Fast Tracks

Ron, sorry to hear about all the problems. I for one back your actions to restrict posting access. If a person wants to ask questions, the delay in having to register is worth the wait for the information.

Keep up the good work as administrator. Love the website.

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Kurt Konrath

SP was king of the road, Cotten Belt will run forever! D&RGW will rule the hills!

Great move!

I get hit on my web site about 60-80 times a day with WEB robots and spiders trying to break in as well. (I don't run a Forum - so they usually fail).

I further like the idea of having only registered (reviewed) members - there's times that some responses should be directed only to the individual and not just a public reply - registered members have a mailbox to do this with.

Keep up the vigilance.

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-ed mccamey-
COSLAR RR - http://www.coslar.us/
NMRA Standards and Conformance Department
PROTO & FINE Scale Coordinator
I estimate I have about 5 pounds of coupler springs somewhere in the vicinity of my workbench.

I don't blame you at all for taking this action Ron, its a pity other web users cannot act responsibly

cheers Steve

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Stopped Thinking, Starting to do

Maybe someday someone will finally invent the silver bullet that will eliminate spam from the internet. Not holding my breath though...

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Cheers!

Ron Warris
Fast Tracks

These automated bots are a pain, but there is a solution. Only problem is it involves using different forum software. After 2 1/2 years, there is yet to be a report by anybody using the software that an automated bot has managed to register. There is a converter available to convert phpBB to the new software. It transfers all members, their PM's, all forums, topics, replies and attachments. If you have anything other than standard user groups, they may have to be reverted to standard whilst the conversion takes place. All the server needs is a minimum of PHP 4.1 and MySQL 3.23 and you're away. I could continue ranting on, but unless there's interest from the powers that be, I'll leave it there.

So I take it you hope the automated registration issue wil be overcome due to the upgrade to phpBB 3.0?

Perhaps. So far it seems like the new security measures are working, but we will have to wait and see. Sure would be nice if it did work, as keeping ahead of the hordes of invaders has been quite time consuming.

Ron

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Cheers!

Ron Warris
Fast Tracks

I've seen other forums that can easily get 50 or more automated registrations each day, so I can imagine how annoying it can be.