New User Registrations

[MmeJavert]

In an attempt to curb the spam and hopefully keep my web host from killing Abaissé, I have forced new registrations to be activated by admin only.

Previously you would receive an email to activate your Abaissé account which would then enable you to begin logging in and posting. The spam bots of course can do that, and they have been bypassing the security question with ease. I've also added some kind of captcha to the registration process. I am completely convinced that the bots have found ways to bypass all the available captchas but maybe not letting them activate will be effective.

I will be monitoring every few days or so for valid registrations. In the meantime, fire me an email directly if you want to rush an account registration.

Also, I have ruthlessly pruned 300+ user accounts, and more will come. I probably didn't get all the spammers in the mass search-and-destroy operations. If you or someone you love had their account deleted, well, create a new one, log in, and post something constructive -- the vast majority of all deleted accounts were either banned, never activated, never logged on, or never used to create any posts.

[omundovaigirando]

Potentially idiotic question: do you know how they bypassed the security question?

[MmeJavert]

Honestly, I assume at this point that spambots are able to answer most forms of captcha and security questions that can easily be googled. Which the security question was. For awhile, having the security question was one of the better ways to avoid spam. But in the last three to five years spambots have gotten rather better at skipping this stuff. The security question would have to be upgraded at this point -- anything not easily googleable can stump a real user; posting it on a thread like this one won't deter any spambots worth their salt because if they can google they can crawl the site for the answer; and anything basic is just going to be defeated.

I never really studied web security in depth but I expect some of these are actual humans, too, and not just bots. Ya know those facebook spams where they say they make 736 a week just typing on the internet? Yeah: those spams involve you creating fake accounts and fake ads on messageboards like this one (once upon a time my sorry poor self went hunting for how to make money on the internet and i tried a fair number of the scams just to see. Not recommended )