Did the site get hacked

[RickPinewild]

I see two bad posts in Vicki's area this morn???

[bambam]

nope, we just had a couple of spammers register. They and their posts have been removed from the system.

[RickPinewild]

Saw more bad posts in Vicki's area this morn. Thanks for a great site.

[Yoda]

Saw more bad posts in Vicki's area this morn. Thanks for a great site.

Thanks, Rick. I've deleted the thread.

[RickPinewild]

Looks like another suspicious post in Vicki's area this morn.

[Bagger Lance]

We get an average of one spam post a day. Usually they are automated programs that register and then make a post. For some reason they target the fitness forum. It's probably part of the programs search criteria.

We are getting spam posts because we recently turned off the email verification feature for new member registration. There were hundreds of people who registered but didn't recieve the email verification because they had an email spam filter. Lots of complaints about that, so we turned off the verification process.

PM me and Bambam if you see anything suspicious.

Thanks,

[metallion]

There were hundreds of people who registered but didn't recieve the email verification because they had an email spam filter.

Hmm. You might want to try:

• Keeping the email verification
• Making sure it goes out as plain text and not html
• Changing the message body from the default & try to rid it from what spam filter might be set to catch, such as "click here to..." etc.
• Displaying a MESSAGE YOU CAN'T MISS on the registering page telling to check their spam folder.

[Bagger Lance]

Hmm. You might want to try:

• Keeping the email verification
• Making sure it goes out as plain text and not html
• Changing the message body from the default & try to rid it from what spam filter might be set to catch, such as "click here to..." etc.
• Displaying a MESSAGE YOU CAN'T MISS on the registering page telling to check their spam folder.

Metallion,

Thanks for the suggestions -
We discussed keeping the email verification, but there were hundreds that couldn't complete the registration process, including some golf professionals.
Spam filters are pretty sophisticated, but also pretty dumb. By default the better ones filter anything thats not in a users approved list of email providers.

From an administration standpoint, we spend far less time monitoring for spam posts than we did answering emails regarding the registration process.
We are looking at some tools to prevent spam posts. This is a common problem with forums.

We aren't dealing with human beings for the most part, these are automated programs that seek, register, and post messages without human involvement. Once in a while we get a real person posting spam, and we can capture their email (usually bogus) and IP address (usually spoofed) but at least we can report something to the sending ISP to make their miserable lives even more miserable.

[ThinkingPlus]

Bagger,

Looks like another one. Newest member: funnykok

[Bagger Lance]

Thanks ThinkingPlus - We nuked him.