Spamming at forums

[Guest]

Hi, Thomas,


I have noticed an increasing number of spam entries in the Hakka and Hokkien forum pages, many of them advertising casinos and other gambling sites.

Perhaps we need to tighten controls on entries, e.g. by restricting forum entries to actual signed-up members who have provided contact details.

Just bringing this to your kind attention.


Regards,

Mark Yong

[webmaster]

Hi, Thomas,


I have noticed an increasing number of spam entries in the Hakka and Hokkien forum pages, many of them advertising casinos and other gambling sites.

Perhaps we need to tighten controls on entries, e.g. by restricting forum entries to actual signed-up members who have provided contact details.

Just bringing this to your kind attention.


Regards,

Mark Yong

Hi Mark,

Thanks for your message. There is indeed an increased spamming by casinos and gambling sites throughout the forums. That's a pity, since I tried to keep the forums as open as possible.

If the spamming continues (most likely), I will restrict posting to signed up members and activate the increased security measures.

Thanks again,

regards,

Thomas

[Thomas]

Hi, Thomas,

Looks like the spamming is really getting out of hand, as is disrupting the forums. Can we put a block on them? I suggest only registered users with full ID profiles provided should be allowed to join and submit entries from now on.

Thanks & regards,
Mark Yong

Yes, will restrict postings coming days.

Thanks,

Thomas

[Mark Yong]

Hi, Thomas,

Looks like the spamming is really getting out of hand, as is disrupting the forums. Can we put a block on them? I suggest only registered users with full ID profiles provided should be allowed to join and submit entries from now on.

Thanks & regards,
Mark Yong

Yes, will restrict postings coming days.

Thanks,

Thomas

Hi, Thomas,

It just occurred to me: Once you implement the posting restriction to require login, you might need to put in a "password retrieval" fail-safe for members, just in case login problems (like what happened the last time for the PhP Themes) occur.

As an added feature, may I recommend that all future members should be required to provide more identification details when signing up (full name, country and valid e-mail address should be a minimum).

Thanks & regards,

Mark

[Mark Yong]

There is a whole string of spam replies at the Chinese forum. Judging from the IDs and content, I have a feeling someone has written a script to auto-generate random login names and text entries.

[webmaster]

Hi Mark,

Thanks for pointing it out (again). Also the remaining public forums will be restricted to registered users only. This should reduce the number of spam messages greatly.

Thomas

[Mark Yong]

Hi, Thomas,

There are spams at these threads:

viewtopic.php?t=2515
viewtopic.php?t=2516

Regards,
Mark