How many real forum members?

[yoderjac]

I was just wondering how many real forum members we have. I happened to look at the registered members pages for something and found an awful lot of BOTs. Any of the mods have an idea of how many are real?

 

[mikmaze]

bot control is an annoying task, that and spammers, I had to manually delete each and block ip for each one at another forum a few years back, got to be almost 100 per day when I threw in the towel.

 

[yoderjac]

It was a really pain in the butt task when I was running a forum. They've even figured out how to beat captcha these days.

 

[Bill]

There’s a bunch of old bots that I haven’t sifted through.

About two years ago I did away with open registration because spam was getting ridiculous. Since then every new member is approved or not manually after I check the IP. I’m sure some legit would be members are denied because of VPN’s but I can’t help that. If someone has a sketchy email address or non N. American IP they don’t get to join the club.....

I really need to sift through the old ones.

 

[j-bird]

Real? Ummm...have you seen or read some of the dumb stuff I do or have done! Yep....real as can be...real stupid, sometimes!

 

[Tree Spud]

There’s a bunch of old bots that I haven’t sifted through.

About two years ago I did away with open registration because spam was getting ridiculous. Since then every new member is approved or not manually after I check the IP. I’m sure some legit would be members are denied because of VPN’s but I can’t help that. If someone has a sketchy email address or non N. American IP they don’t get to join the club.....

I really need to sift through the old ones.

I am the portal at my company for inquiries. Last 4-5 months with even best spam screening practices, i am deleting 75-100 emails a day that have viruses. We receive many requests for info with attachments, that is part of our problem.

My suggestion, delete and send all old member requests to junk, and delete that folder regularly.

Part of the problem is...create requirements to fill out the application form with 5-6 pieces of info. who cares if a ph # is wrong, I don't think botts or spammers can complete the required digital format and sequence.

I also think you may be able to screen IP's by country.

Anyways ... set spam security on high and force people to fill out the form correctly. Remember "RIFF" ... righting is fundamental?

 

[Bill]

Hmm that was easy.

It let me sort users that had zero post and hadn’t logged in, in the past year. Then I nuked em.
May take a few hours for the batch update to show. That should kill all the bots unless I approved one manually by mistake.

 

[yoderjac]

I think manual approval is the way to go. Screening by IP never worked for me. Screening by country is pretty coarse. Most go through servers in the US because they know folks filter by country. Email is a bit different than forum registration. I actually had me email service turn off spam filtering. Whatever they were using I had no control over and it was too tight. I had important email go to the spam box on their server. Since I use outlook rather than their web app, I never knew when an important email was filtered into spam. I now do my own spam filtering locally. I key on the new TLDs that nobody legit uses. For .com, .org, and .info, have to filter by the full domain name. I'd say I have to add about a half dozen to the list each day.

I can't recall if this forum uses email validation for new accounts, but that is always helpful. Many bots are not sophisticated enough to complete an email verification process. With a fourm like XenForo, you are limited to the capabilities the forum supports.

Thanks,

Jack

 

[Bill]

One needs to enter a valid email. No verification but the spam email addresses are pretty obvious but they have added acronyms before .com. The captcha has become pretty useless. It would be daunting if there were 100’s a day. If John and I stay on top of it it’s not that bad.

Not a lot of legit users singing up in the middle of the night but lots of bots do..

You’re right manual approval has cut the spam by like 99.5%

 

[Bill]

We’re still small but we’re ad free and somewhat spam free.

 

[yoderjac]

Ya, I'm not sure what all features XenForo has. On the web sites I've setup that allow folks to register, the site sends a message with a verification code to the provided email and they have to provide the code to complete the registration. Depending on how you craft the email, it requires a much more sophisticated BOT to complete it. Once they have completed the registration, it still requires approval.

 

[j-bird]

Good! I think spam takes like crap....."meat" should not come in a can! I am so glad I can contribute here!!!

 

[S.T.Fanatic]

spam is one of the main reasons people are able to get replacement parts from pigs.

 

[Tree Spud]

Good! I think spam takes like crap....."meat" should not come in a can! I am so glad I can contribute here!!!

Spam is close to culinary perfection ... fried eggs, sauteed green peppers, & spam for breakfast

 

[j-bird]

Spam is close to culinary perfection ... fried eggs, sauteed green peppers, & spam for breakfast

Sounds like a recipe for ....

 

[TreeDaddy]

^^^^^^ now thats genius

now we need emoji for stupid s***

bill

 

[yoderjac]

Did you mean stupid ?

 

[Tree Spud]

^^^^^^ now thats genius

now we need emoji for stupid s***

bill

 

[Tree Spud]

Did you mean stupid ?

Sounds like a recipe for ....

I would hate to live in your world if that is how you see things ... what, are you duces vegans?

 

[Bill]

I would hate to live in your world if that is how you see things ... what, are you duces vegans?

They just never Fried the spam until it was crispy brown on the outside....
Only way to eat it. On toast with mustard adds to it.